To Repay A Debt
by GodzillaGuy92
Summary: Sequel to Sweet Hearts. Oliver and Miley owe Lilly for getting them together. Bigtime. So how to pay her back? Simple. Hook her up with the most unlikely person imaginable: Jackson. And they soon learn that this will definitely not be a simple task...
1. The Lightbulb Of Halo

Finally, the sequel to Sweet Hearts is up! I'm sorry it took so long, but this is a pretty big chapter. I just figured that a good start will grab more peoples' attention and ensure that the rest of the story will stay high-quality. And to all of you who haven't read the first story, you don't really need to read it to understand this one.

Expect this story to be much more light-hearted, upbeat, and funny than Sweet Hearts. True, it had a happy ending, but most of it had a sort of sad, hopeless feel. This story will be more along the lines of a real episode in terms of feel and humor. Hopefully, though, this will not degrade from the quality. I will also be taking a different direction from Sweet Hearts in the issue of whose point-of-view it will be told from. The perspective will switch around between Miley, Lilly, Oliver, and Jackson. I don't think that the end product would be as good if you only saw one side of it. So, yeah. That's all I've got left to say. At last, to the story!

* * *

**To Repay A Debt**

By GodzillaGuy

**Chapter 1**

**The Lightbulb Of Halo**

"And so, here we are," finished Oliver. "So I just think that we need to repay Lilly somehow."

"Wow," I said simply, rubbing my head to get rid of some of the ache produced by his story.

We were sitting on my couch. He had just told me his account of what happened that Valentine's Day a week or two ago. It was long, complicated, and pretty darn entertaining. Who'da thought his thought processes were that complex? Not me, that's for sure.

"You know, you're a really good storyteller," I said.

"Is that all I'm good at?" he questioned playfully.

I pretended to think for a moment before replying, "No."

He crossed his arms and made a puppy-dog pout face.

Oh, how could resist that?

"Well, there is _one_ other thing you're good at," I yielded.

"And that is?" he asked with a smug smile.

I started to lean in. "You tell me," I said flirtatiously.

My lips met his, and my arms did their customary snap up to his sides as the familiar electricity flooded through my body.

I had to hand it to him, he was a _great _kisser.

"Hey, love birds. Get a cage."

We abruptly separated, looking around wildly for the culprit. At the foot of the stairs stood Jackson, looking maddeningly pleased with himself.

"Hey, single bird. Get a birdbath," I retorted. Oliver gave me a high-five.

Jackson pretended I hadn't said anything as he stepped over the back of the couch and sat down directly in between us.

"Sheesh, Jackson, way to kill a mood," I said bitterly.

"That's what I'm here for, sis," he answered cheerfully. I gave him a dark scowl.

Still ignoring me, he reached over and turned on the X-box with one hand while grabbing a controller with the other.

"Don't you have anything better to do than stare at a flashing screen for two hours straight while exercizing nothing but your thumbs?" I asked suavely.

"It just so happens that video games involve much more than that," Jackson told me matter-of-factly. "They can teach you a lot."

"I see. And what mind-challenging and completely educational experience are you now about to submerse yourself in this time, dear brother?" I said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"_Halo 2_," he said over the electric guitar solo and drums that were playing in sync with the Bungie icon.

"Figures," I muttered, casting my eyes to the ceiling.

The phone rang. The fact that Jackson wasn't going to answer it was an automatic given in my mind, so I rose from the sofa and picked it up.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hey, it's me! Landing in ten!" rang a high-pitched voice from the other end.

"Alright." I hung up.

"Lilly in ten," I announced.

"I'll get it," said Jackson, setting down his precious controller.

_What the heck?_ was the first thing to cross my mind. I happened to know for a fact that the only things able to drag Jackson away from a functioning video game console were money, food, and girls. Lilly didn't hand out free money, and Jackson wasn't a cannibal...

My thoughts were interrupted by the creak of the door swinging open followed by the sound of the wheels of Lilly's skateboard rolling across the wooden floor.

"Hey, guys," she greeted, propping her board up against the wall.

"Hey," we all echoed. Jackson shut the door and resumed his position in front of the TV screen, which was now displaying the title screen over a choir singing a moody melody in the background.

"Oh, cool, _Halo 2_," said Lilly, observing the game's menu. "Can I play?"

"Only if we play on co-op."

"What?" she nearly yelled in protest, causing me to wince painfully. "No way! We've gotta play split-screen."

"I don't think so," he answered. "The campaign is way more fun."

A sly smile began to take shape on Lilly's features. "You just don't wanna play against me because you know I'll beat you."

At this proclamation, Jackson's manly pride took over. He plugged in a second controller and slammed it on the coffee table.

"Sit down, Truscott," he commanded with a fierce look in his eye. The smile on her face brighter than ever, she obeyed.

I sat down on the chair to the right of the couch. This was definitely going to be an interesting show.

Jackson, of course, was already signed in. He was one of those humans who wore those big mechanical suits. I couldn't remember the name. Some kind of ancient warrior civilization or something. I knew the main character was one of them. Most of the armor was a deep red, but some of it was sky blue. Lilly logged in to her profile, a hunched-over alien wearing green plating with patches of olive on the same places Jackson's character was blue. Like the cyborg human, one of the other main characters in the main game was a member of Lilly's little creation.

Jackson wordlessly scrolled through the options menu, setting the score limit to five kills and choosing an area called Coagulation.

The game started. "_Slayer_," said a deep, disembodied voice. Jackson was on top and Lilly was on bottom. They were both holding some kind of black gun with a little scope at the top. I caught the tiny words "Battle Rifle" at the bottom before they faded away. Jackson was standing on a shady hill, while Lilly was at some kind of base.

"Why'd you guys go here?" I asked. "The place is just a big canyon with a base on each side and a dirt road in between them."

"Coagulation is legendary," said Lilly sharply. Jackson promptly nodded, too absorbed in the game to contribute anything more to the conversation. Lilly didn't seem to have anything else to say either, so I decided to change the subject.

"Yeah, about the name Coagulation," I said, "why are all the names of everything in this game completely random?"

"They are _not_ random," said Lilly with a sort of shocked indignance.

"Then tell me, Lilly, what possible reason is there for naming a Jeep with a turret on the back of it a Warthog?" I inquired smoothly.

"And what possible reason is there for making the last name of your alter-ego Montana?" she shot back with surprising vigor.

"She's got a point," said Oliver. I threw a pillow at him.

Lilly was on top of the base by now. There was a gun with a scope and a very long barrel just lying there. She picked it up, and the words "Sniper Rifle" appeared at the bottom of her screen.

The next thing I knew, there was a quiet electronic _whoosh_, and everything on Lilly's screen was suddenly magnified. The corner of the screen read "5x." There was another sound of it zooming in, for by that time I realized that was what the magnification was, the objects on the screen became twice as big again, and the corner of her screen said "10x."

Lilly directed her improved gaze out towards the open field, roving back and forth as if she was searching for something. Before too long, she spotted the crimson figure of Jackson, who was running towards something on the ground that was too far away to make out clearly.

Speaking of make out...

I gestured to Oliver, who was still sitting on the couch, to come over to my chair.

"Yeah?" he said in a hushed voice once he arrived.

"So like you were saying before, how do we repay Lilly?" I asked.

A loud _crack_ of the Sniper Rifle from the TV pierced the air, shortly accompanied by a cry of outrage from Jackson.

"I was going to ask you that same question," he squeezed out in between chuckles.

Lilly zoomed back out and jumped off the roof of the base. Sitting motionless on the ground was a some kind of big purple thing with a weird little stub sticking out from each side. A short sentence appeared at the top of the screen: "_Press X to enter Ghost_." I assumed that "Ghost" was the name of the purple thing. What did I tell ya? Completely random.

She climbed into it; apparently it was some kind of vehicle. The little protrusions on the sides seemed to be wings or something of the sort, because they glowed a bright blue as it hovered above the ground. She drove to the spot where Jackson had fallen, reaching it in ten seconds. Once there, she exited the Ghost and walked forwards, towards the thing on the dirt road that Jackson had been running at. I didn't need the words on the bottom that faded in when she picked it up to tell that it was a Rocket Launcher.

Content with her current progress there, Lilly got back in the Ghost and began moving to the base on the other side of the level.

I could see her on Jackson's screen. He was at the base she was going to, his Battle Rifle zoomed in. It wasn't as good at it as the Sniper Rifle - the reading in the corner of his screen said only "2x" - but at least it had a scope.

Lilly was closing in. It looked like she was heading right at him.

Jackson aimed at her head and fired. The Battle Rifle sent three bullets at a time to meet her. I her energy shield flashed bright orange, but she didn't slow down or even acknowledge the fact that she was currently being shot at all.

Jackson realized what she was trying to do too late. He tried to jump to the side, but Lilly's vehicle was too fast. The vehicle crashed into him while he was still in the air, sending his now dead body about ten feet into the air before his progress was halted by the rocky wall of the cliff.

"Got any ideas?" Oliver said, still quiet enough so that Lilly and Jackson couldn't hear.

I shook my head. "Give me some time."

Lilly abandoned her Ghost again, heading to the base. She walked around it until she found an entrance to the bottom of it.

Inside was yet another vehicle. It looked like it was made by the same people as the Ghost. It was exactly the same color, with two short little wings. However, it was clear that it was different from her last ride. It was about twice as tall, and the wings were thinner and touched the ground. Once she was beside it, "_Press X to enter the Banshee_," popped up at the top of the screen.

Lilly entered this mysterious contraption, and it also rose to the air.

Hmm... how to pay Lilly back? She already got to go to basically any Hannah-related event she pleased, so that wouldn't work.

Lilly revealed that the Banshee did indeed possess an ability the Ghost didn't; it could fly. Not just staying a foot above the ground, but actually flying. She ascended to about one hundred feet in the air within ten seconds.

There was a small red dot on the ground below Lilly, which she turned to. It took me a moment to realize that it was Jackson. He looked so small from this height.

Lilly opened fire on him with the Banshee's twin plasma cannons. See? I knew enough about the game to know what plasma cannons are.

The red figure of Jackson flared the same orange color that Lilly had when Jackson hit her with the Battle Rifle. Bolts of blue plasma rained down on him from above like a swarm of angry bees. He tried running behind a large pile of boulders, but he was already dead by the time he reached them.

I could hear the sound of his teeth grinding together in frustration from my chair.

What could I possibly do for Lilly? Buy her something? Like a cute pair of shoes? Nah, that wasn't enough. And besides, it wasn't like Lilly couldn't borrow any article of clothing she wanted from my Hannah closet already.

Lilly turned the Banshee away from Jackson's body. Now she was flying to a ledge on the rock wall.

When she was right up next to it, she hopped out of the Banshee, which fell uselessly to the ground below. Now she was standing on the ledge, which was covered in most places by a large rock. There was still sufficient room for her to shoot down on anything in the belly of the canyon.

Lilly pulled out her Sniper Rifle and zoomed in. Strangely, Jackson started laughing.

"Nice try, Truscott," he said self-assuredly. "But you'll never shoot me here."

I turned my eyes to Jackson's half of the screen. Sure enough, he had taken cover behind a tree. There was no way she'd be able to hit him without relinquishing her sniping position.

Nevertheless, Lilly kept her gaze focused on the tree. Suddenly, Jackson ran out from his hiding spot. There was another echoing _crack_ from Lilly's Sniper Rifle. But it was too late. Jackson had already ducked behind the tree again.

It only took another second for Jackson to repeat this maneuver. Once again, Lilly missed.

"See?" said Jackson. "Pretty soon, you're gonna be out of ammo."

It was true. Lilly only had four shots left in her Sniper Rifle.

Lilly kept her targeting reticle trained on that exact spot where Jackson had been running out. Her left finger was trembling in apprehension.

Jackson ran out from behind the tree trunk again. Lilly instinctively fired, but she missed completely, considering that Jackson had come out from the other side of the tree. She aimed wildly at the spot he did come out of and fired again, but Jackson had already gotten back behind it.

Now she was aiming at the center of the tree, ready to aim and fire at the slightest movement.

Jackson came out again. This time, Lilly didn't fire. He came out the other side, but she still didn't fire. Jackson started to zigzag in between the left and right side of the tree without stopping for cover. Lilly kept her Sniper Rifle pointed at one spot.

Finally, she fired, missing completely. This seemed to embolden Jackson. He strayed farther and farther from the safety of the tree.

"Can't catch me, catch me, catch me," he began to sing. "Can't catch me, catch me, catch me. Can't catch me, catch-"

Lilly's final sniper shell passed straight through his energy shield and pierced his head. Jackson said nothing, but the smile on his face instantly disappered and he gripped his controller so hard that his knuckles began to turn white.

Maybe I could hook Lilly up with a guy. Play matchmaker. Yeah. After all, that was exactly what she had done for Oliver and I. It would totally be returning the favor.

Even though he had died in the execution of it, Jackson's plan to deprive Lilly of ammo had worked. She jumped off of the sniping spot and walked off toward the dirt road.

At the same time, Jackson had respawned right next to the base that was closest to the ledge. The color returned to his knuckles as he began to run to the Banshee that Lilly had left on the ground when she had jumped on the ledge.

No, playing matchmaker wouldn't work. She had said it herself on Valentine's Day; she didn't have anyone of her own to try to hook up with, which was why she had decided to get Oliver and I together.

"Thanks for the Banshee," he said gloatingly when he was about a foot away from it.

A rocket slammed into the stationary Banshee with a deafening explosion, throwing Jackson's corpse through the air like a feather in a hurricane. It took a full ten seconds for him to finally land. Ten seconds doesn't seem like much when you just say it, but it's actually a pretty long time. Just to give you the idea, count down ten seconds right now. Trust me, he stayed airborn for quite some time.

"You're welcome," replied Lilly, wearing a smile that stretched ear-to-ear, whether that was physically possible or not. Jackson, on the other hand, couldn't seem to decide whether he was mad, shocked, humiliated, or really had to go to the bathroom.

Wait a second. What was I thinking? Lilly _always_ had _some_ guy on her mind. When the day came that she didn't have a crush on anybody, the North Pole would randomly blow up, sending thousands of confused elves and hungry polar bears falling to the earth.

"I think I've thought of something we could do to repay Lilly," I murmured to Oliver.

"Yeah?" he said, leaning towards me with interest.

"We hook her up with a guy. I mean, that's what she did with us. That's the most complete way to do it."

Oliver considered the proposal for a moment, then nodded in agreement. "But who could Lilly possibly like?"

I furrowed my brow in deep thought. That was a very good question. Who _did_ Lilly like?

My eyes drifted off on their own little journeys, the higher areas of my mind preoccupied with other things. Out of a stroke of pure luck, they landed on the sight of Lilly and Jackson sitting on the couch where Oliver and I had been making out mere minutes before.

Somebody reached out and clicked on a little lightbulb in my head.

"Jackson!" I exclaimed in an excited whisper.


	2. The Quest Begins

**Chapter 2**

**The Quest Begins**

"Jackson who?" I asked blankly.

The eager expression on Miley's face disappeared.

"How many Jacksons do we know?" she said.

Hmm... there was Jackson, Miley's brother... that was the only one I could think of.

"Only one, I think," I said, still trying to remember whether we knew any others.

"Riiiiight," she stretched the word out, nodding slowly as if indicating to a five-year-old that he had just answered a question correctly.

"But the only Jackson we know is your broth - ohhhhhhhhh."

"Yeah. Ohhhh."

I looked at Miley with concern. "Are you feeling alright?" She certainly _looked_ fine. Well, she always looked fine in at least one definition of the word. But what she was now suggesting caused me to wonder whether she had hit her head really hard some time earlier.

She gave me one of her trademark Looks. "Yes, I feel perfectly fine. Here, follow me."

I didn't exactly have a choice whether to follow her or not, considering that she grabbed my wrist and yanked me after her, but she only led me to her back porch.

"Now we can have a private talk," said Miley.

"Okay. Now that we can talk in normal voices again, tell me exactly the person who you just suggested for us to get Lilly together with."

"Jackson," said Miley slowly. "Jackson Rod Stewart. My brother. The son of my dad. The nephew of my Uncle Earl. Do you want any other things I can call him?"

"No, I'm good. Now tell me, do you remember any period of time today that you have no memory of that started with something very heavy coming straight at your head?" I asked, entirely serious.

"No," replied Miley curtly.

"Okay," I said in the same manner a psychologist might. I reached over and touched her head softly. "Now tell me, does that hurt at all?"

"No, but it's annoying."

Disregarding the latter part of the sentence, I shifted my outstretched hand to the other side of her head.

"How about now?"

"_No_." She sounded aggravated.

I moved my hand to the back of her head.

"How abou-"

She slapped my hand away.

"Oliver, I have not received a recent bump, concussion, or any other type of brain damage. I'm saying that the guy we should hook Lilly up with is Jackson, Jackson Rod Stewart, my brother, son of my dad, nephew-"

"Okay, okay," I interrupted, still nursing my bruised hand. "Well, now that I know that we can carry on this conversation in a semi-reasonable manner, here's a silly question: how exactly did you come up with the conclusion that Lilly likes Jackson?"

Miley closed her eyes and sighed.

"Think about it, Oliver. Take a few seconds and just think. Have you ever noticed any sign, at any time whatsoever, even if it might just be complete coincidence, that Lilly might have a crush on Jackson?"

I set aside my physical existence, putting all of my essence into thinking. I sifted through my memories like they were an untidy pile of papers, trying to find the one that I was looking for out of the thousands sitting there.

And weirdly enough, the more memories I went over, the more the idea of Lilly liking Jackson seemed more plausible. All the little things... the cheerful way she endured all of his various oddities... her unquestioned willigness to hang out with him when the need arose... all of those countless occasions when I had caught her looking at him...

I retreated from the corners of my mind, back to the real world. I looked at Miley with wide eyes.

"See what I mean?" she said. I nodded in a bewildered way.

"But how about Jackson liking Lilly back?" I asked. "We can't hook them up if one of them doesn't like the other."

"I've been thinking about that too. But remember how Jackson didn't get up to get the phone, but he got up to get the door when he found out that it was Lilly?"

I pondered this. And the more I did, the more it made sense. And hadn't Jackson had somewhat of an eager tone in his voice when he said he would get the door?

And then there was the issue of the video game itself. Jackson usually preferred to indulge in massacring hordes of aliens by himself. But when Lilly asked, he immediately agreed, even though there had been a condition. And even the condition was abandoned after a little prompting.

"Okay, assuming that they like each other, which we still haven't proven," I added hastily, "another wonderful question springs to mind: why do they like each other?"

"Well, think about it," said Miley. "They're both kind of... _special_."

"I can't argue with you on that one," I admitted.

"And don't they both really seem to enjoy themselves more when they're around each other?"

I went back to thinking. It _was_ true. Whenever they were together, they always laughed harder at everything, especially if it involved the other person.

Wow. So Lilly liked Jackson. And Jackson liked Lilly. I briefly wondered if we were on some kind of hidden-camera show.

I looked back at Lilly and Jackson, sitting on the couch. It was like seeing them with new eyes.

This was all so very strange.

"Okay, fine," I said. "So I guess they do like each other. Wait, when did you figure this out?"

"Just now."

"And it took you that long?" I said.

"Hey, it just came to me." She put her hands on her hips. "And I didn't see you solving this little mystery."

"Yeah, well, that's different." I spoke again before Miley had time to ask how it was different. "You're, like, a girl."

"Oh, very good, little Ollie Oken!" she exclaimed in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, clapping her hands excitedly. "Have you been working on that all this week? Here's a cookie!"

"No, not like that," I said. "I mean, like, girls are supposed to know what their best friends are thinking. I mean, Lilly knew about us since we first started liking each other. So, shouldn't you have known this awhile? Isn't it, like, a part of the female genetic structure or something?"

"I may be good, but I'm not good enough to keep track of everything that goes on inside Lilly's twisted mind. But I'm pretty sure I can always guess about what you're thinking, though," said Miley.

"Oh, yeah?" I challenged, temporarily shoving the issue of Lilly and Jackson aside. "Then let's make a bet. Five bucks says you don't know I'm thinking about right now."

"Muffins."

"Crap," I muttered as I handed over a crisp Andrew Jackson to Miley.

"Back to the point," said Miley, the smug smile now beginning to leave her face, "we're getting them together. Do you think we should tell either of them? How 'bout Lilly?"

"No. No. Nonononono," I responded immediately. "She's probably convinced in her mind that Jackson doesn't like her back. We both know what that feels like." The smug smile on Miley's face had disappeared entirely by now at the painful memories of how things used to be as she nodded. "If she finds out what we're up to, she's gonna fight us. She's too good. It'll be much easier if she doesn't know. But maybe we could tell Jackson."

"No. No. Nonononono," protested Miley.

"Why not? It's not like he'd be a threat."

"That's true," said Miley, "but I'd still rather not tell him."

"Why not?" I asked.

An evil smile spread across her features, the fact that she had the face of an angel only making the overall effect more disturbing.

"It's too fun to mess with him."

Sometimes Miley scared me.

"Are you sure we're gonna do this?" I wanted to be positive we would both be willing to go through it.

"Absolutely," Miley said with rock-hard resolve. "This was mostly your idea in the first place, after all. We both owe Lilly, and it would be wrong not to return the favor."

She was right. We both owed Lilly. And, in fact, I also owed Jackson...

* * *

I jumped straight over the steps of the bus, far too excited to take the time to actually use them. Behind me, Miley followed. We were in front of her house; I had already called my mom from the bus and gotten permission to get off here.

Not wanting to intrude, I let Miley go in first. Although I did open the door for her. Normally I wouldn't worry about breaking courtesy, but telling Jackson and Mr. Stewart about the little developement of this Valentine's Day had to handled delicately.

Mr. Stewart was currently sitting on the couch, watching something on TV. I was too filled with a mixture of excitement and fear to register what he was watching.

"Hey, Daddy, could you turn that off for a second? I've got some big news," said Miley, trying to mask her own worries.

"You and Oliver are goin' out?" he asked curiously without turning off the TV.

Miley's mouth dropped in perfect unison with mine.

"How-"

"Did I know? Trust me, I've known for a long time. Besides, it _is_ Valentine's Day."

"But-"

"How'd I find out? I just figured it out. Wasn't hard. You two're more obvious than when Uncle Earl decided to ride a unicycle backwards down I-70."

"And-"

"I'm perfectly okay with that."

Slowly, the feeling of unease inside me began to melt away, replaced by joy.

"Seriously?" I asked, not believing the ease with which I had just been approved.

"'Course," replied Mr. Stewart.

There was nothing for it; I threw my arms around him in the tightest hug I could summon. Mr. Stewart made a noise that sounded like a tire deflating slowly as I squeezed the air from his lungs.

This continued for about five seconds before he tentatively returned the hug.

"Hey, Oliver?"

"Yeah?"

"Get off me."

I quickly released my death-grip, allowing Mr. Stewart to gasp for oxygen.

"Thank you," he said gratefully once he caught his breath.

"Okay, then," said Miley, who I now noticed was looking at me as if I wasn't quite alright mentally. She shook it off. "One down, one to go."

As if on cue, Jackson came down the stairs at that moment. The feelings of nervousness swiftly re-established themselves. After all, Jackson was, in a limited sort of way, my friend too. And even though he didn't really seem to care about Miley's personal or romantic life, he might decide to have a Big Brother moment for all I knew.

"Hey Jackson, I've got some big news," said Miley. She didn't seem to be as worried about Jackson as I was.

"You and Oken here are goin' out?" he guessed monotonously, granting me a negligent gesture as he walked straight past us and into the kitchen.

"WHAT THE HECK?!" Miley screamed to nobody in particular. "Isn't there anybody who doesn't already know Oliver and I like each other?!"

"Nope," said Jackson as he unloaded a small mountain of sandwich ingredients from the fridge.

Miley gave some sort of cross between a growl and a sigh. "So how'd you find out, Jackson? Did you look in my notebook to try and find all of those times I put MileyXOliver inside of those little hearts I drew?"

"Of course not," scoffed Jackson. "I read your diary."

"You WHAT?!"

"Hey, it's not my fault that you couldn't find a hiding spot better than inside of the suitcase with combination number 12-39-03 under the loose floorboard under your bed." The way he said it, he made it seem perfectly casual.

"Besides," he continued before Miley could rebuke him for invading her privacy, "I knew about it before I did that. I just read your diary to make sure. Oh, and by the way, I'd _love_ to see those MileyXOliver hearts of yours."

Miley hugged her backpack defensively.

With a submissive sort of shake of her head, she said, "Come on, Oliver. Let's go up to my room."

Having a pretty good idea of what exactly she wanted to do in her room, I started to follow eagerly. But, trying not to seem _too_ eager in front of Mr. Stewart, I stopped and went back for my backpack. As I did this, Jackson also retreated to the stairs, still grasping his sandwich. I thought nothing of it.

Mr. Stewart didn't seem to notice me, because as I was going up the stairs, I heard him mutter quietly, "Two down, two to go." I briefly pondered what he meant by that. Probably something on the TV. Shrugging it off, I scaled the remaining stairs.

I was in the hallway when I heard a door swing open quickly. Before I had time to turn around, I was yanked backwards by my collar. The next thing I knew, I was laying sprawled out over the floor of Jackson's room.

Standing over me was the owner of the room himself. The possibilities of getting beat up until I couldn't feel my own head suddenly seemed ten times more likely.

"So," said Jackson slowly, "you're dating my little sister." It wasn't a question.

He crossed his arms like an ancient war chieftan disappointed with one of his subordinates. "First thing's first; nothing leaves this room."

I nodded out of fear as I rose from the floor, though I was fairly certain that I wouldn't be able to not take the bruises I knew I was about to receive out of the room.

"It may seem like I don't care about anything involving my little sister. The truth is, I care quite a bit." I prepared myself for the pain.

To my amazement, Jackson's face softened considerably as he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Look, Oliver, it's not that I don't care about you and Miley. The reason I'm not killing you right now is because I know you're a great guy for her." He paid no attention to the fact that my mouth was now getting closer to the ground with each word he said, particularly when he said "Oliver" instead of "Oken."

"Not like that Jake guy. Who kisses a girl and then leaves the country for four months? That's a whole third of a year! Next time he orders a shake at Rico's, he's in for a big surprise."

I mustered up the nerve to talk. "What are you gonna do?" I asked, alarmed. Jake was an idiot for deserting Miley and all, but I didn't want Jackson to slip him some poison.

"I was thinking some sand, maybe a crab," he said offhandedly. My shoulders slumped with relief.

"How about some sand _and_ a crab?" I suggested.

"I like the way you think!" said Jackson, nodding approvingly. He became serious again. "But ya never have to worry about anything like that from me, as long as you don't hurt my little sister. And I know you won't. You've got my blessing. Just so long as you don't tell Miley this conversation ever happened," he added.

I smiled. "Thanks, man."

"Anytime." He lowered his hand.

"Oliver! Where are you?" I heard the muffled sound of Miley's voice calling.

"Now, if you'll excuse me..."

I exited Jackson's room, comfortably assured now that nobody would stand in the way of me and my new girlfriend.

* * *

I owed Lilly just as much as Miley, plus I also owed Jackson. I had even more reason to do this than Miley.

I gave a determined nod. "Let's do it."

"We've gotta seal it," she reminded me. She spit into her hand and held it out to me. I winced as I reluctantly shook it. Contact with her saliva still grossed me out. Unless, of course, it was my tongue that was touching it...

"Alright," said Miley, mercifully breaking the spit-shake. "From this point on, we don't rest until Lilly and Jackson are together."

_Looks like my life is about to get _very _interesting. Ohhhhhh, boy._

* * *

Well, there it is! Now the real plot can finally start!

Be prepared for a chapter from the point of view of either Lilly or Jackson. I'm not sure which yet. Vote for whichever one you prefer when you review, and I'll do the winner (unless I think of a plot reason that would somehow make that impossible).


	3. Lilly Time

I counted the votes you guys gave me, and Jackson won just by a hair. Sorry to anyone who voted otherwise. But that means that the next chapter will be from Lilly's point-of-view, so you guys have something to cheer about.

Also, now I know pretty much exactly how this story's gonna end, although I have next to no idea how the characters will get there.

* * *

**Chapter 3**

**Lilly Time**

Humiliation. Rage. Some random craving for pizza.

These were among the things going through my mind (and taste buds) as the results on the screen showed precisely how badly Lilly had beaten me.

**DaJacksonator:** Kills: 0.

**Sk8ingSangheili:** Kills: 5.

Normally, I'd say something along the lines of, "Kill me," but Lilly already covered that one pretty well.

But on the plus side, Lilly's triumphant smile looked extremely cute, even if it did make me want to rip something in half.

Yes, I liked Lilly. Please try to constrain your gasps of shocked surprise. Don't ask me why, don't ask me how, but I just did. That was the simple truth of it. I honestly didn't know exactly why it was that way, whether it was her sense of humor, her beautiful golden hair, or just the fact that no matter what happened, she was never just your average girl, never lacking in individuality no matter what the circumstances. She was always just Lilly, and that was a much better quality than she gave herself credit for.

But the fact that she was just her presented all of the chief problems.

Number 1: Age.

Two years. It might as well have been a two-foot-thick wall. Made of steel. And with spikes sticking out. Maybe if there had been only a one-year difference, the thought would have been more acceptable. Juniors dating sophomores wasn't exactly unheard of, but there was still a small line there. Those were only differences in grades. Now think of what kind of boundaries there were for different _school levels_. A high school student going out with a middle school student? People would definitely start to suspect certain things. I would have just waited for another year until she went to my high school, but this idea was thwarted by the other reasons.

Number 2: Miley.

If you were putting together some kind of personal profile about Lilly, one of the chief things you would include would be that her best friend was Miley. As in, my little sister. They just went together; you couldn't have one without the other. And I knew that Miley definitely would _not_ like the idea of her big brother and best friend going out. It was a law: siblings can't have any girlfriends/boyfriends that have any relation whatsoever to any of their other siblings. I think that being a best friend would fall under the category of "any relation." Miley might have been small, but she could hit pretty hard.

Number 3: Unrequited feelings.

The biggest reason of them all why a relationship wouldn't work out. It was clear that Lilly didn't like me the way I liked her. Sure, we had some fun times, like just now with the game of _Halo 2_, but that's all they were to her - games. Just little novelties that she could enjoy just as much, if not more, doing it with anyone else. For me, they were fleeting chances that I had to spend time with her. I couldn't actually seek her out and ask to hang out with her. Miley would figure something was up. And then - _snap!_ - there goes my left leg.

Like this game. I would have just asked her to play with me, but then I would have seemed like I wanted her around. Which I truly did, but I couldn't let anyone know that. I had to wait for her to ask first. And even then I had to play hard to get over it, so as not to seem suspicious. Especially since I had partially blown my cover by voluntarily getting up to get the door for her. After all, not only was I helping her, I got a very nice look at her backside in return as she skated in. Of course, whenever I looked at those... _places_, I would always feel shameful for being such a pervert. And when I was playing hard to get, if she had simply decided she would rather just not argue with me about which game mode to play on and not play, then I would have missed the rare opportunity completely, leaving me to wallow in my loneliness and self-guilt that I had ruined the chance. My life was so complicated.

So here I was, sitting on the couch, the person who I might have cared for the most in the world basking in the glory of her complete and utter defeat over me.

Ironic, ain't it?

At least Miley had dragged Oken out of the room with her, probably so he could help her out with her abnormally dry mouth again. She seemed to need that particular treatment a lot lately.

In any case, that left me a precious amount of time I could spend with Lilly. Probably a pretty long amount of time, if my hunch about what her two best friends were doing was correct.

So I decided to talk. I always intended to squeeze out every ounce of enjoyment from my experiences with her, so running the high risk of losing another game of _Halo 2_ again was out of the question. Talking, however, was ideal.

"Good game," I said with a half-forced smile, my vocal cords still stiff from the loss.

"I know," she agreed. Although I was, and had good reason to be, annoyed by this, I was glad that she had said it. It wasn't so much what she said as long as she said _something_. Hearing her voice just gave me a kind of thrill. I guess it was lucky for me that she had a big mouth.

Of course, this principle didn't always hold true. Like when Miley had hired me as her Senior Vice President In Charge Of Assistication. I just happened to overhear a certain blonde informing my sister that hiring me was "hor-ri-ble." It stung, much more than I thought it could. Normally even insults from her sounded good, especially since I could usually find ways of turning them into compliments.

I brought myself back to the present and decided to change the subject. Any further mention of _Halo 2_ would quickly ruin this session of Lilly Time.

"So, Oken tells me that you're the one that got him and my little sister together." It was a sign of how far apart our times together were that I hadn't talked to her about this yet.

"_Oliver_ tells you right," she said.

"He was a little sketchy on the details, though," I continued. "Care to fill me in?"

"Aah, it was nothing," she said while making an idle gesture with one hand. "They were obviously meant for each other anyway. All I had to do was kind of trigger it."

I nodded. "How'd ya do that?"

"Just little stuff. I found a partner for Geometry class before Miley could ask me, which forced her to be Oliver's partner. Then I pushed Miley on top of Oliver when we were in Gym." Her voice started to rise with enthusiasm. "You should have been there, you could totally tell they were about to kiss, but then they got off each other and ran in opposite directions. Their faces were _so_ red."

She had me hooked. "Then?"

"Well," she started, calming down, "at lunch I 'accidentally,'" she made air quotations, "spilled milk on myself after Miley asked me how my matchmaking was going, because I told her that I'd play matchmaker between two people because I didn't have anyone of my own." Her shoulders sagged slightly, but quickly reassumed their former positions. "I just didn't tell her that it was her and Oliver that I was playing matchmaker with. So that left them alone for awhile. Too bad about my top, though," she added.

"Well, I guess there's no there's crying over spilled milk," I said.

"My joke," said Lilly without so much as cracking a smile. Hmph. Whatever.

"So keep going," I said, leaning forward.

She shrugged. "That's about it, for my part. We went outside for Science class because we didn't have anything else to do - and because it was Valentine's Day - and Oliver walked up and asked if could talk to Miley alone. So they went off behind the school building."

"What'd they say?"

Lilly looked indignant. "Do you honestly think that I'd eavesdrop on my two best friends, especially when they were in the middle of a very fragile discussion?" She clapped her hand over her heart dramatically.

My gaze didn't waver.

"Okay, okay, so I tried to listen."

"That's more like it," I said. "So, back to the question: what'd they say?"

"Oliver caught me before they could say anything else and told me to leave," she said as if the very idea was insane.

"So you don't know what they said?" I said disappointedly.

"Of course I do," she scoffed. "I went back as soon as he went back behind the building and listened to them with my fingers crossed."

I laughed, thoroughly impressed. My heart gave a short leap when she smiled back.

"Anyways, they both kind of started rambling, then Oliver kind of just burst out that he liked her. The she was like, 'What?' and he gave this monolgue about how much he loved her. It was really sweet, actually. Then Miley pretty much told him that she liked him back, and then I heard them just stop talking. So I peeked around the corner, and they were kissing!"

She gave a little squeal at this point. It seemed that she was still excited at the whole idea even weeks after it happened. That was one of the things I liked about Lilly: she was always so enthusiastic about everything.

"So then I figured that they probably wouldn't be spending a lot more time behind the corner of the building, so I ran away so they wouldn't catch me eavesdropping. I guess they saw me doing all my cheerleading moves in celebration, but oh well."

"Your cheerleading moves?" I said with a measure of doubt. "The last time I saw you doing any cheerleading moves, you ended up on the sofa. And you didn't even jump there from the piano! Some athlete you are."

"I've gotten better since then," she said as if she were offended.

"Prove it," I taunted.

"Fine."

Before I could grasp what she was doing, Lilly had jumped on top of the couch. She took no time to hesitate before she leapt into a frontflip, sailed clear over the coffee table, and landed in a somersault. From there, she leaned into a perfectly executed backhandspring, landing lightly on the chair with her arms folded and a smug smile on her face.

"... okay, maybe you've got some moves." In truth, I was using every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep myself from gaping. I used the small area of Lilly's midriff that had revealed itself some time during the gymnastics session as a distraction.

I wisely concluded, though, that she would catch me staring at that spot if I continued for much longer, so I decided to find another vessel. _Perfect_, I thought as I spotted a small bowl of caramel-filled chocolates.

That worked for about two seconds. Then I detected dozens of tiny voices emanating from the bowl. "_Per-vert! Per-vert!_" chanted the chocolates as if they themselves were cheerleaders.

"Oh please, Jackson, you couldn't do anything half that good," said Lilly.

"_Per-vert! Per-vert!_"

"I can too," I argued over the increasingly loud pieces of chocolate.

"_PER-VERT! PER-_"

I snatched one of the chocolates out of the tray, tore off the aluminum wrapper, and brought my fist down. When I raised it, several chocolate fragments shaped like broken glass sat suspended on top of a small blob of yellow-orange caramel. The others immediately shut up. Victory!

Lilly stared as if I had plucked off my left toe and stuck it in my ear. "Should I ask?" she said uncertainly.

"What? That's just how I eat them," I lied. I demonstrated by running my finger through the gooey mixture. I held it up for a second for dramatic effect, then stuck it in my mouth. Mmm.

"If that's your grand performance, I'm surprised you're name's important enough to be capitalized."

"My name _is_ capitalized, thank you very much," I snapped, "and that was _not_ my grand performance. This is."

As quickly as I could to match Lilly, I jumped on top of the couch. Unfortunately, my momentum carried me too far, and I tripped over the back of it and landed on the floor in a heap. I tried to make it seem like I did it on purpose by rolling a little bit then standing up, but, judging by the fact that Lilly's burst of laughter didn't become quieter, it didn't seem to work.

From there I attempted to redeem my bruised pride with a session of Riverdancing. My feet flew this way and that, kicking over each other and crossing in front of and behind both its corresponding leg and its double seamlessly for thirty seconds straight. I finished with a bow. Lilly clapped, although I was too exhausted to know or care whether it was sarcastic or not. I decided to take it at face value.

"Thank you, thank you," I panted. "You're a great audience. Hey, Lilly?"

"Yeah?"

"Catch me."

With that, I collapsed from exhaustion. And Lilly didn't catch me, either. I never really noticed how hard the floor was until then.

_Great job, Jackson_, I mocked myself. _Way to get back your pride. Especially in front of Lilly._

I eventually managed to hoist myself back onto the couch.

"You know, that would have probably been a lot more impressive if I hadn't already seen it a hundered times," remarked Lilly. I grunted, too tired to give a more proper response.

"So, what were we talking about?" I eventually managed to ask while half-pretending to be annoyed at her beautiful smile of amusement.

She furrowed her brow in thought. "Let's see... oh yeah, we were talking about how I got Miley and Oliver together."

"Right, right." I paused to let the information come back. "So, let me get this straight: You did a bunch of little things to get them together because you knew that they were destined for each other, and you knew that would work?"

"Pretty smart, huh?"

I shrugged as I resisted the impulse to agree wholeheartedly with her. That was the kind of answer you could only get out of Lilly. Another reason why talking to her was such a good idea.

Our discussion couldn't be carried any further, however, because Miley and Oken returned, much to my grief.

"Where have you two been?" inquired Lilly innocently, though the twinkle in her eyes suggested that she had about the same idea as me.

"A better question is, did we miss another game where you totally destroyed Jackson?" Oken dodged her previous question. On the surface, that seemed amateur, but to one who knew Lilly, the method was actually pretty ingenious. Lilly would never resist the opportunity to brag, which would completely divert her attention away from whatever it was she wanted to know. Dang it, that was good.

Lilly's grin betrayed her intentions. "Well, I _did_ just ace him in an athletics contest."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" said Miley. My eyes narrowed. But the usual twinge of annoyance left surprisingly quickly. It took me a moment or two to figure out why: Miley didn't really seem to have put much... effort into it. It was like she was distracted by something. And she was giving me a subtle kind of searching look. I didn't like it.

Oken still seemed interested in the "contest."

"What did you guys do?" he asked.

"I did some of my cheerleading moves, perfectly executed, of course," replied Lilly smugly. "He did that Irish dance he always does and collapsed in about ten seconds."

"Thirty!" I corrected. "And it's called Riverdancing."

"Whatever."

"What'd you two do the rest of the time?" said Miley. If I hadn't known better, I'd say she sounded unusually curious about the prospect of us being alone together. And she didn't seem distracted anymore.

"We just talked," shrugged Lilly.

"You had to talk to _Jackson_?" said Miley, raising her hand up to her heart in sympathy. "I'm _so_ sorry." There it was again. Like part of her mind was somewhere else.

Deciding that my presence was no longer required, I forced my body to carry itself up the stairs. I felt strangely satisfied; I had managed to secure a few minutes of Lilly Time, and that was better than usual. True, it had come at the cost of my mobility, but that wasn't the point.

Still, I couldn't help but feel uneasy with the way Miley had acted. I shrugged it off. It was probably nothing.

Right?

* * *

There you have it. A pretty good-sized chapter, if I may say so myself. Did any of you catch a hint of Lackson for Lilly? If you did, point it out in your review and I'll mention the first one to do it in the next Author's Note. I'd do it for everyone who guessed it correctly, but you could just go to the reviews and look off of someone who figured it out on their own, and that wouldn't be fair.

Please review!


	4. Sugary Sleepover

As for my little challenge for last chapter, everyone who guessed did get it right. However, there was one specific answer I was looking for, and the only one to get it was **daisy17**. If you look back to Chapter 3, you'll see that when Lilly mentions that she didn't have anyone for her own on Valentine's Day, her shoulders sagged for a moment. Congratulations!

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**Sugary Sleepover**

"What time is it? What time is it?" I asked as I hopped over the litter of junk food wrappers, boxes, cans, and other containers that were scattered all over the floor of Miley's room.

Miley glanced at the clock. "One-thirty," she replied calmly.

I stopped. "Wait a minute. So it's still dark outside," I walked over to the window and threw back the curtains, revealing the black night sky, "but it's not nighttime?"

"Yes," said Miley slowly.

"So, it's not really Friday night anymore? It's actually Saturday morning?"

"Uh huh," nodded Oliver.

I felt a wide grin tugging my cheeks away from each other. "That is _so_ cool!" I resumed jumping in between the vessels of caffeine and sugar, not caring in the least that both of my best friends were rolling their eyes at me.

Things weren't really that different between the three of us. Miley and Oliver may have confessed there feelings to each other and started dating, but it was almost as if nothing had happened. They still joked around and everything. The only difference was that they threw in some kissing in between this behavior for good measure and they were both a lot happier all the time. To an outsider, you wouldn't know they both been feeling pretty miserable on the inside quite often... most of the time. There were, of course, exceptions. Before the whole Valentine's Day incident that I so brilliantly orchestrated, Oliver would hardly ever be able to listen to _If We Were A Movie_ without a hint of obvious sadness flickering across his face at least once. And on Valentine's Day itself, he seemed pretty depressed a lot.

Nevertheless, I could tell they tried their best not to make me feel left out, and I was grateful for that. I admit that I could do with a little less kissing. It was cool the first time and everything, but the novelty of it quickly wore off. Well, for me at least. They never seemed to get tired of it. If they were somehow able, they would probably make out forever. And it did occasionally lead to some awkward moments. Like in an excruciatingly dimly lighted movie theater. I happened to know that they had been kicked out about halfway through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although it was much easier afterward to pay attention to the movie).

But the fact that they were finally together was well worth the price. For the most part, life was good.

For the most part.

"Eating ten Oreos and washing them down with an entire can of Coke in the course of two minutes sure gives you a lot of pep, huh?" said Miley.

I bounced off her bed and danced over to her. "Does pep mean you're constantly blinking?" I asked, my eyes faithfully snapping open and closed.

"That's pep, alright," she said, eying me warily.

I nodded briskly, for no real reason other than a conduit for my sugar-induced fit of hyperactivity, and swung my arms in wide arcs like a pinwheel. But these activites were beginning to bore me. I needed something more.

"So, whattaya wanna do? Whattaya wanna do?"

"How about watch a movie?" suggested Miley.

"NOT GOOD ENOUGH!" I screamed, causing her to flinch.

"Got any better suggestions?" she said, rubbing her ears.

I pondered the question for about half a second. "Yeah."

"What?"

"PILLOWFIGHT!"

In one smooth motion, I snatched a pillow off Miley's bed and hurled it at her. Miley squealed as the pillow hit her face with a muffled _thump_. She gave me a malevolent stare for a moment before grabbing the pillow and springing towards me. I quickly got another pillow and raised it just in time to block the downward sweep she had been aiming at my head. The pillows made a small _boom_ as they hit each other.

Thrown off balance by my parry, Miley stumbled backward. I used the opportunity to lash her once on the side before she could recover, which sent her even further back before she hit the wall. I swung at her head again, but she ducked. My pillow hit the bare wall. I swung it down as soon as it did, scoring the top of her head.

Grasping her pillow with both hands, Miley shoved as hard as she could. This sent me backwards, freeing her from my trap. I felt something hard collide with the back of my knees. It was only after I fell that I realized it was the edge of Miley's bed. I tucked my arms and legs into a roll and stuck the landing on the other side of the bed.

Oliver clapped, which reminded me that he was there at all. "Hey Oliver, why aren't you pillowfighting?"

"Please. Pillowfights? I think I'm a bit too mature for that."

Miley threw her pillow directly at his head. He ducked, then rose again, a smug smile on his face.

"Haha, you miss-" he was cut off by my pillow hitting him squarely in the face. He looked at us challengingly. "Oh, it's on."

He grabbed one of the pillows and charged. Miley, who had retrieved another pillow off her bed, rose it up to block his strike. I also picked up a pillow, but didn't immediately enter the fray. Instead, I ran to the place where Oliver had been sitting and used my free hand to grasp the pillow he had left behind. Now I had two pillows. Perfect for fighting two people at once.

I sprinted at Miley and Oliver, who were locked in combat. Before they knew what hit them, they had each received three pillow strikes in varying places. They seemed to silently declare a truce, because they immediately stopped attacking each other and concentrated on me. Not that it made any difference. Fueled by my sugar rush, my pillows served as powerful extensions of my own arms. They flew gracefully through the air, each move weaving into the next so that it all appeared to be one continuous attack. They were in such a flurry of motion that it was impossible to pinpoint the exact location of any of them. It was like trying to do the same with one of the blades of a moving fan; they seemed to be everywhere at once.

I heard the door squeak as it opened.

"What're you guys doing?" said a Southern twang that brought a thrill to my insides.

Suddenly, I had no inclination to continue the pillowfight.

Composing myself, I turned around.

"Hey, Jackson. Just having a pillowfight." Okay, good. My voice didn't waver at all.

"Looks more like a pillow war to me," said Jackson, eyeing the four pillows and exhausted teenage couple lying equally immobile on the floor.

"Yep. I got them almost as bad as I got you earlier today." Jackson's satisfied smile at the sight of his defeated sister disappeared. "Oops, I mean _yesterday_." I giggled again.

"You're gonna hold that silly little doesn't-mean-anything-at-all one-time incident over my head for the rest of my life, aren't ya?"

"Yep," I replied cheerfully.

"Well, it doesn't look like you're gonna be continuing this pillowfight any more," he purposely changed the subject, "and I've got nothing to do. You guys wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure!" I agreed a little too enthusiastically. Everybody looked at me oddly. Jackson seemed to dismiss it as a product of my sugar rush and walked over to the movie shelf. I figured Miley and Oliver would probably do the same, but as I watched them out of the corner of my eye, they continued to look... was that _suspicion_? It was the same look they gave me earlier - I mean, the day before.

_Do they know?_

"Whattaya wanna watch?" called the source of my doubts from the corner of the room.

I suppressed the impulse to sigh. Not from what was said, but from who said it.

Jackson, Jackson... Why did I have to fall for him, of all people? If my crush on him was evaluated by some dispassionate computer, it wouldn't turn up the result as perfect. The fact that he was Miley's brother was a big factor against me. I mean, you couldn't just date your best friend's sibling. It would give rise to a whole slew of awkward situations.

So, let's pretend Jackson wasn't Miley's brother, just a guy who I saw ever so often while getting a milkshake at Rico's. And you know what? It _still_ wouldn't work. He was two years older than me. So if he wasn't Miley's brother, he'd think of me as some kid who liked chocolate shakes way too much. Okay, maybe that was true, but that wasn't the point. But since he _was_ Miley's brother, to him I was officially nothing more than his baby sister's best friend... who liked chocolate shakes way too much. And then if he somehow found out how I felt, he would just shrug it off as some meaningless childhood crush... or worse, be disgusted by it.

None of these thoughts registered consciously to me. I was used to them. Just a vague sense of the words cropped up inside me whenever I so much as read the name "Andrew Jackson" in my History textbook. It was worse sometimes than others. The middle of History class wasn't very bad, but when I found myself thinking about it more deeply at ten-o-clock, waiting in my bed for sleep to overtake me, the feeling of emptiness inside me increased greatly.

What _did_ register consciously to me was the dilemma of what to watch.

"Something scary," I said immediately.

"Good call," he answered. I couldn't help but feel unnaturally good about his agreeing with me. "What've we got here?" he said to himself, rummaging through Miley's DVDs. "No... no... no... sheesh, Miley, do you have _anything_ scary?"

"Forgive me for not relishing the emotion of fear," retorted Miley.

Jackson turned back to his search. "Hey, here's something," he said after a few seconds, holding up a darkly colored DVD case with something blurry and green on front that I couldn't make out from the other side of the room. The letters were also very thin, so I couldn't read it. "Miles, how'd my copy of Alien 3 get in your room?"

She shrugged. "Maybe it burst out of our chest while you were asleep one night and crawled in here." This earned a small chuckle from Oliver. "I didn't even know you had that movie."

"I haven't watched it yet. I think I got it last Christmas. Maybe Dad was sorting through the movies we got and accidentally put it in your pile. Either way, we've got something to watch now."

"Are you sure you wanna do that?" asked Oliver cautiously.

"Yeah," said Jackson. "Why not?"

"Oh yes, please tell us," I said with a smile. "You're not scared, are you?" I happened to know that the same aunt who had brought about his fear of gum had showed him the first Alien when he was just a baby. However, since dealing with the Alien movies happened a lot less than dealing with gum, this particular phobia was as of yet unknown to his girlfriend, who was currently looking at him curiously.

He looked nervous for a moment, then swelled up his chest and tilted his chin up to the air. "Pshh, no," he said in a voice much deeper than normal. "I, uh, just wanted to make sure you guys wouldn't be too scared." As if to prove the point more, he put an arm around Miley comfortingly.

By the time it was half an hour into the movie, he had withdrawn the hand so that she wouldn't be able to feel it shaking.

The tone of the movie was, like its two predecessors, very dark and eerie. After an extremely chilling opening credits sequence, it begins with the main character, Ripley, fresh out of the action of Aliens crashing on some remote prison world. Once the people there wake her up, they inform her that all the friends she had made from the last movie had died in the crash. Ouch.

But there's an even bigger twist. At the same time as them having a funeral for the Marine and little girl who died, a dog starts acting all funny. Before long he's on the floor thrashing around, when - _splat_ - an Alien pops out of its chest, totally covered in blood.

As for me, the whole thing could have been a lot worse. Despite the inward groan I had restrained when it was suggestested we watch a sci-fi movie (no matter how allegedly scary it was supposed to be), I was enjoying myself. The movie was mildly interesting, and with Miley and Oliver sitting next to each other, that left me free to sit next to Jackson. I probably would have been a lot more scared (not to mention disgusted) at the sight of a cute little dog practically exploding if he hadn't been beside me.

Staying awake was no problem, either. Although my sugar rush had officially ended, I was naturally hyper. I stayed up a long time and slept very little. It was in my nature. I also still had a treasure trove of sugary goodness to help. Whenever I felt my eyes start to droop, all I had to do was take one sip of Coke, one bite of a Hershey bar, and all tiredness instantly left and stayed that way for another twenty minutes.

So now the Alien had been loose for some time, and I knew enough about the series to know that Aliens grow up very quickly. Some dude was doing something in this big tunnel that was angled slightly downward into a giant fan. He looked down a little tunnel branching off it and saw something move. Immediately I knew what it was, but that was the thing about horror movies; you know something bad's gonna happen, but you've gotta keep watching, just to make sure. And sometimes the filmmakers take advantage of it and fake you out, and - at the expense of the moment - nothing bad happens, save that you just got duped.

Not this time, though. The guy started sticking his head down the hole. From the way he was talking to it, I surmised that he must have thought it was his dog. Since we already saw the dog die, now we pretty much knew for sure it was the Alien.

And yet, it was exciting. You now know for a fact he's gonna die, but it still keeps you enthralled until you see it with your own eyes. _The magic of horror movies_, I mused. My heart was beating harder as the seconds passed. I became increasingly aware of the fact that the lights were off. With every word he spoke to it, every step he took closer, the tension built up more, and more, and-

The Alien lunged at him. A long, toothed rod shot out of its mouth, punching messily through his skull. The man screamed.

At that exact moment, the door swung open. We all screamed. Without thinking, I grabbed onto Jackson, who grabbed back at the same time.

The dark figure who had opened the door reached out and flicked the light switch. Instantly, it was revealed to be none other than Mr. Stewart, in a thoroughly non-intimidating t-shirt and pair of pajama pants. I instantly felt ashamed of myself for being scared.

"Can y'all please keep it down?" he requested tiredly. "It's past two o' clock and I'm trying to sleep."

"Sorry, daddy," apologized Miley. She obediently turned down the volume a few notches after the man in the movie slid down the tunnel before being sliced to bloody ribbons by the fan.

"Thank you." He turned to me. "Keep an eye on them two," he said while pointing offhandedly at Miley and Oliver. It was part of the long-time deal; I had to be present at any overnight thing Miley and Oliver were at so they wouldn't be too tempted to do anything more than kissing, if you know what I mean. It was a bedroom, after all.

"And Miley and Oliver, do the same for them." This time he was gesturing to Jackson and I. Before either of us could say anything, he bid us goodnight with a yawn and shut the door.

I was about to ask nobody in particular what he meant by that when I answered myself; Jackson and I hadn't let go of each other.

I quickly did so and made sure I looked anywhere but at him, partly so he couldn't see how red my face became. The TV screen made a good tool for this.

The rest of the movie passed pretty uneventfully. After the Alien killed almost all the characters, they killed it by dropping it in molten lead then spraying water all over it, making it explode. However, the main character had another Alien inside her body, so she jumped into the vat of lead and killed herself just as it burst out of her chest. As the credits began to roll, Oliver, rather hastily, ejected the movie and turned the lights on.

"That was pretty good," said Jackson.

"Yeah," agreed Oliver, who _almost_ managed to keep the shakiness out of his voice.

"So, you weren't scared, Oliver?" I asked suavely.

"Come on, are you kidding? That wasn't scary at all."

"Riiiiight."

Oliver stuck his tongue out at me quickly while Miley wasn't looking, then turned his back in order to feast on a bag of Cheetos. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I knew who it was immediately, because my skin tingled where it was touched. I looked at Jackson for the first time since the whole hugging incident to be greeted by a crafty-looking wink.

Jackson slowly crawled over to Oliver, making sure he didn't make a sound. Miley and I watched with interest. Then, when he was less than a foot behind him, he grabbed Oliver by the shoulders and made a screech that sounded remarkably like the Alien from the movie right in his ear.

Oliver reflexively threw the Cheetos in the air with a decidedly unmasculine scream of terror. Everybody except him burst into laughter, me most of all, as the Cheetos rained down all over the floor.

"Well," said Jackson after he and Oliver had cleaned up the Cheetos (with their mouths), "I think I'm gonna go to bed now. My aim is to be awake by two o' clock tomorrow."

"I see you're trying to get up earlier," observed Miley. Her sarcasm, however, appeared to be lost on her brother.

"Yep. Goodnight, everybody." With that, he walked out and shut the door.

Despite the natural sinking feeling I got when he left my presence, I was still quite cheerful when I said, "Okay, guys, how about another pillowfight?"

Miley and Oliver exchanged a scared glance before turning back to me. "Goodnight, Lilly," they said at the same time.

We each crawled into our respective night-dwellings: Oliver and I in our sleeping bags, Miley in her bed. Oliver slept on the left side of the bed, I slept on the right.

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

"But I'm not tired."

"I said goodnight!"

"Fine. Goodnight."

Predictably, I was the one who wasn't tired. Still, I tried to force myself to go to sleep by closing my eyes and trying to keep any thought from entering my head. This attempt was doomed from the start, however, as it was pretty much impossible for something or another to _not _be going through my mind at any given point. Tonight's topic: Jackson and I hugging. As much as I tried to prevent it, the scene kept playing itself over and over in my head, which in turn quickened my pulse to a point where all essence of tiredness I had previously built up was destroyed.

Perhaps that was the reason why I was able to stay up long enough to hear Miley and Oliver start whispering to each other. I was very curious as to what they were talking about, especially since it was probably none of my business, but I couldn't hear what they were saying, nor could I get any closer without them noticing.

As much as I tried to convince myself they were just flirting with each other anyway, I felt a strange sense of unease as to what they could possibly be talking about. I had no idea why; I just kind of sensed it.

Eventually, as their whispering continued, I drifted off into dreams where Aliens ate Cheetos, Miley and Oliver never refused pillowfights, and there was nothing holding me back from Jackson.

* * *

Not too bad, right? And there is some significance about that last part that you'll find out later.

Well, Alien 3 is about the scariest movie I've ever seen. But I'm one hundred percent positive there are scarier ones out there; I just haven't seen them. Still, especially when you're alone and with the lights out, it really creeps me out. Just for the record, though, I never screamed. I just made that part up.

Also from my life is that little part about Lilly being able to absorb the sugar and caffeine from junk food so well.

Lastly, that part about Oliver feeling kind of sad whenever he heard _If We Were A Movie_ is true for me. I told you guys I'm a tortured soul.

Please review!


	5. Morning Modes

I may not be able to update by then, but my birthday's on July 20 (which, incidently, is the day before the seventh Harry Potter book comes out), so consider this kind of my goodie bag to you guys. Or something. And, of course, Happy Fourth of July!

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**Morning Modes**

I moved through a long, dark corridor, with no idea of where I was going, why I was going there, or how I got to the place where I was at. The hallway had no windows, nor any lights on the ceilings, so I was surrounded by thick, impenetrable darkness. The only reason I knew that I was in a hallway was because I could feel the unnaturally smooth walls, which were only a short distance from each other. I attempted to locate a door, sometimes switching what wall I was leaning on as I continually moved forward, but there were none. My bare feet stung from the coldness of the floor with each step I took.

The darkness generated a sickening, depressing atmosphere that robbed me of all happiness. The corridor was so devoid of light that I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face. It always seemed as though something was looming a few feet in front of me, causing me to move in a half-crouching position with my arms groping blindly ahead of me to prevent a collision that seemed to always be directly ahead but never came. As tempting as it was to simply sit down and not continue at all, something was drawing me further, tugging at my awareness.

As I moved further on, I gradually began to feel less hopeless. That darkness didn't seem to close in on me as much, though I still couldn't see anything. I thought it was my imagination at first, but I soon spotted a faint point of light twinkling ahead of me. I raised myself up a bit from my crouch, though not all the way, as it slowly increased in size and intensity.

Drawing nearer and nearer, I saw... _something_ in the center of the light, which was now bright enough for me to barely make out that walls around me. It wasn't a silhouette, otherwise it would be black in contrast to the light. If anything, it was actually brighter than the light surrounding it.

I was now walking normally. The sight of the whatever-it-was had brought an inexplicable joy to my heart. The light was still growing brighter, enough for me to see that the walls were dull grey. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was reaching the light. I walked faster.

It suddenly became apparent that the light was not shining from behind the unknown object; it was coming from the object itself. My feet increased speed as if from their own willpower.

I was hit by a jolt of realization as I came close enough to see what the object was.

The object wasn't an it at all; it was a they.

And they were the most gorgeous pair of shoes I had ever seen.

I broke into a frenzied sprint. It didn't matter at all that the light emanating from the shoes was now so intense that it hurt my eyes. I squinted as hard as I could and didn't so much as slow my pace. The shoes grew swiftly nearer. My hands were outstretched, as though hopeful of plucking their image out of the air as soon as possible. My heart was beating at the same caliber as a machine gun, whether that was physically possible for a human or not. That didn't matter either.

The shoes were close, now only a few feet away. The light stabbed at my eyes, despite the fact that I was squinting so hard that every muscle in the top half of my face ached. I gave an extra-hard stretch forward, the one that would claim the glorious shoes for my own, my fingers wriggling like angry snakes.

The nearest shoe suddenly turned to me on its own and ripped near the bottom. With a voice that sounded incredibly similar to Oliver's, it used the rip as a mouth and blared unnaturally loudly, "MILEY, WAKE UP!"

I was instantly transported away from the corridor to find that I was lying sideways in my bed with an inexplicable urge to bury my head in my pillow and never resurface. I forced myself to deny this inclination, for the moment at least, to look at Oliver, who was standing over me with an eager grin on his face.

"What?" I said menacingly through gritted teeth.

Oliver didn't seem to notice that I was using all the self-restraint I had to not attempt to strangle him. "It's breakfast time, and your dad's made those cinnamon and vanilla pancakes!"

I waited a few seconds for any more important news to present itself. No such luck.

"You woke me up for _that_?" I said, the venom in my voice increasing with each syllable. Again, Oliver didn't notice.

"Uh huh!" he affirmed with an excited nod.

I summoned the best fake smile I could manage. "Hey Oliver, could you hand me that magazine?" I gestured to my nightstand.

"Sure," he said, apparently somewhat confused as to why I wanted it. He gave it to me anyway, though.

"Thank you."

He yelped in sudden pain as I brought it down sharply on his head.

* * *

A few minutes later, I was sitting at the table with Oliver (Lilly had said drowsily that she would be coming down in a minute) with my head resting on the tabletop. The clatter of plates being set on it caused me to reluctantly sit up, with a dish of three steaming pancakes sliding where my head was a few moments before.

Normally I would have relished the relatively rare occasion of Dad making this special variety of flapjacks, but not this morning; the image of those shoes kept swimming through my mind. I looked across the table. Oliver, not exactly to my displeasure, still seemed to be nursing the top of his head with an ice pack. With a small smile, I started to eat the pancakes.

I had to admit, eating them did prematurely bring me out of Morning Mode. Normally, I'd still be sleepy, listless, irritable, and talk only in somewhat angry mutters. If someone said something positive to me, I would assume they were being sarcastic by default. I wasn't exactly what you would call a morning person. In fact, I was probably about as far from a morning person as you could get. Spending half of your nights as Hannah Montana can do that to you.

Not this morning, at any rate. Which was good, because I would need all the energy I could get. Today was the day Oliver and I would get my best friend and my brother together, and I was intent on that. Odd, all things considered, but that was the way it was.

I also needed to be vivacious for another reason, which was revealed to me as Lilly came down the stairs. Usually, Lilly was exactly the opposite of me in the morning: cheerful and perky as ever. Probably more, because she had just spent eight hours recharging her batteries. Now, though, she walked with a definite slump in her shoulders, her arms swinging limply at her sides. Her eyes were only halfway open, and didn't seem to focus on anything as she made her way to the table.

"What's wrong, Lilly?" I probed gently after a few silent moments.

She sighed. "Do you ever wake up and just not feel pretty?"

"No," answered Oliver with a confused frown. I spared him a quick glance of disdain before turning back to Lilly.

"Don't say that, Lilly," I said encouragingly. "That's just the sugar hangover talking."

This was true. Lilly normally didn't get sugar hangovers. When she did, however, they were proportionally larger than the average person's.

"You are a beautiful human being!" I continued when she didn't respond to my last comment. "Just like the flower you were named after!"

"But flowers aren't human beings," pointed out Oliver.

"Don't help," I muttered quickly to him. Again, I diverted my attention back to Lilly. "The point is, you can't just go around thinking you're not good-looking when you can look into any mirror and see otherwise."

She didn't reply to my pep talk, simply staring down at her waffles emotionlessly.

I decided to try something a little different. "Come on. Jackson's driving us to the beach on his way to work, and you can't go feeling all moody."

I wouldn't have seen it if I wasn't specifically looking for it, but there it was; Lilly perked up very slightly at the mention of Jackson. How had I not noticed that kind of thing before?

"Since when am I driving you guys anywhere?" demanded Jackson, who was just walking into the kitchen.

"Since this poor, tired teenage soul has developed the notion that she isn't physically attractive." I drew an imaginary outline around Lilly's face with my fingers, underlining the message with a puppy dog pout. "Tell Lilly she's pretty," I requested in the saddest voice I could muster.

"Well... why don't you tell her?" he asked uncertainly. "It'll... mean more." I noticed that he seemed to be making quite a business of getting some silverware out of a drawer, all the while keeping his back turned to us.

"I already have, but she won't listen to me. Just say it." I waited until I was sure that he was turned around completely before saying, "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaase," using Lilly's mouth like I would a puppet.

Jackson looked very uncomfortable, and I detected a faint flush in his cheeks. He still seemed to be in the midst of coming up with another way to dodge the solicitation when Lilly gave a miserable sigh. "It's okay, Jackson. If you don't think I'm pretty, you don't have to say so. I get it."

"No," said Jackson with such sudden intensity that Lilly lifted her head. "Lilly, how can you think that? You're absolutely beautiful, _and_ you're funny and smart and..." he paused, as though only just realizing what he was saying, "...just everything someone could want, you've got it."

If Lilly was surprised, it was nothing compared to how I was feeling. I knew Jackson liked her and everything, but who knew he could be so... _sweet_? Completely corny, but sweet. This was more serious than I thought. All the more reason why Oliver and I had to get them together.

By now, Jackson's face was quite a bit redder than before. Lilly's face was just as red, though she also looked flattered. And as if to make the whole situation more obvious, both of them were looking anywhere but the other person.

"So... Jackson, will you drive us?" I said after a full ten seconds of silence. He grunted in affirmative. I turned back around. "Lilly, will you come with us?" She mimicked Jackson.

"Great!" I said brightly. "Then let's go after we finish eating."

Jackson wordlessly sat down and began eating, as did Lilly. I carefully observed them over the next few minutes. Neither spoke to anyone, and while the flush gradually disappeared from their faces, they still kept their eyes pointed resolutely on their food.

Before long, everyone finished their pancakes. We all went upstairs to change into our swimwear (Oliver and Lilly borrowed bathing suits from Jackson and I, respectively), then met at Jackson's car.

"Oh, wait!" I said suddenly. "We forgot our surfboards." I raised my hand as if volunteering for something. "I'll get them. Oliver, come with me."

But, of course, I hadn't forgotten to get the boards at all, although I still needed to do that. It was all part of the plan Oliver and I made last night when Lilly was asleep. We both ran into the house, no doubt leaving Lilly and Jackson in an awkward silence. Oh well.

"Okay," I said, "You get the boards, I'll get the... what was it again?"

"Somnambulatole," he replied casually.

"What's the point of code-naming it anyway?"

"Because it makes it sound cooler!" he exclaimed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I shook my head. "Whatever. Let's go."

I went up the stairs and to Dad's room. I knocked on the door cautiously. No answer. Perfect.

I slipped inside and made my way over to his drawers. Being careful to make as little noise as possible, I opened them one by one and sifted through their contents until I finally found what I was looking for. I took one, stuffed it in my pocket, and quietly shut the door as I walked out.

When I got back downstairs, the three surfboards were propped against the couch, but Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

"Oliver!" I called.

"Ing hugh," came a muffled reply from the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" I asked. Oliver was crouched down in front of the refigerator, which was open. His mouth was also so full that each of his cheeks looked like it had a slightly misshapen tennis ball inside it.

He paused for a few seconds to swallow, then sheepishly answered, "I'm still hungry."

"You can eat later, Oliver! We've gotta go!"

He shook his head and clawed through the contents of the fridge like someone who had just gone a week without food. He soon surfaced with two handfulls of food.

"We don't have time for this!" I all but yelled.

"I'll tell you what. I'll compromise; I'll only eat what I've got right here, then we go."

"Fine," I yielded, annoyed. A minute later, even though he was wolfing the stuff down at a rate that would cause me to worry for his health if it was anybody else, it was still taking some time.

"If it'll get us out quicker, can I at least help you finish?" I asked between his bites.

"No!" he answered stubbornly, even pulling the food closer to him as if I was going to grab at it.

"Oliver, you're being ridiculous!" He didn't reply. A small smile crept on my face as I experienced a small but clever burst of inspiration.

"Let me eat something, or I'm not kissing you for a week," I threatened.

Oliver stayed silent for a moment, then gave a laugh somewhere between nervousness and amusement. "Woman, please. You think you can manipulate me with kissing?" He laughed again.

I didn't respond, simply staring at him with the same expression on my face. Slowly, his grin was replaced by a look of horror, then defeat. "Fine," he sighed. "What do you say to a donut?" He held one out.

"I say, 'what's up, Oliver?'" I said, raising my hand as if to high-five the donut. He scowled.

"Forget it, let's go," he muttered, setting down the food as he walked to the door.

"If you insist," I replied with a wide smile before doing the same.

* * *

Well, I figured I've kept you guys waiting long enough. Next chapter is when Miley and Oliver set their plan in motion. Any guesses as to what they're up to, particularly with what Miley got out of Robby Ray's room? I did give you guys a hint with the code-name being "Somnambulatole."


	6. Sun, Sand, and Somnambulatoles

**Chapter 6**

**Sun, Sand, and Somnambulatoles**

We arrived at the beach after a few minutes of quiet. Lilly and Jackson were keeping quiet, no doubt, because of what the latter had said fifteen or so minutes before. I did the same because of Miley's little stunt back at her house. I crossed my arms just thinking about it, while my stomach responded in turn by growling loudly. Miley was probably silently celebrating for the same reason I was now hungry and disgruntled, or perhaps simply figured there was no point in talking if nobody else would.

We got out of the car, grabbed our boards, and walked up the sands of the beach to Rico's, where Jackson hopped over the counter to begin his shift. It was a nice day. The sun was shining brightly, not a cloud in the sky. Despite the slightly early hour, there was more enough heat to attract a respectable amount of people. Seagulls cawed overhead, their feathered wings stretched out far as they basked in the sun's warmth. I took all this as a good omen.

Pausing only to go over what I was supposed to do in my mind again, I said, "Hey guys, wanna get something to drink before we get in the water?" It had, of course, been Miley's idea that I be the one to ask the question. She never answered me when I asked why I had to do it, and since then I had deduced that it was because I would then be expected to pay for them.

As predicted, Lilly brightened up immediately at the opportunity to purchase a sugary beverage. "Yeah!" she agreed a bit loudly.

I turned around, ordered three chocolate shakes (Lilly's favorite) from Jackson, went back to where the girls were waiting, and distributed the drinks accordingly. Lilly lunged at her straw at once, only to be met with thin air.

"Not so fast," said Miley, now holding Lilly's milkshake. "We've gotta check that Jackson didn't accidentally make it banana. Again."

Knowing her since preschool had resulted in me knowing many seemingly random facts about Lilly. One such bit of information was that she was allergic to bananas. One time, Jackson had made a little mistake in making her yet another chocolate shake, and... well, let's just say that Amber and Ashley had a lot of fun the next day at school.

Miley flipped open the lid, and, unnoticed by Lilly, dropped a small object into the beverage as she pretended to examine it.

"It's clean," she announced as she handed it back to Lilly, who, I noticed with pleasure, took a very large sip of it before starting off towards the shore.

We set up our towels side-by-side once we got there, finished our milkshakes, and got into the water. As we paddled farther into the ocean, I kept a close eye on Lilly, watching carefully for any signs that the Somnambulatole was working. I was slightly disheartened when nothing happened, but kept waiting. Ater a few minutes, however, I could tell that it was beginning to take effect; Lilly's eyes began to droop, and before too long she was yawning every ten seconds or so.

"Hey guys?" she asked a little drowsily. "I think I'm gonna get out. I feel tired for some reason."

"Okay," we said, and with another parting yawn, Lilly paddled away.

"Yes!" exclaimed Miley triumphantly once Lilly was out of earshot. "The sleeping pill worked!"

"Somna-" My correction was abruptly cut off by her splashing me.

"Forget the stupid code-names. Just come on." Reflecting briefly on how annoyed I was with her, I grudgingly followed Miley back to shore.

Lilly was already asleep, her body still dripping wet. As if to make the picture even more convincing, her mouth was slightly ajar. The only flaw was the steady rise and fall of her chest. Hopefully that would go unnoticed.

Miley gazed at Lilly for a moment as if to admire her handiwork, then turned back to me. "Ready?"

"As I ever will be," I answered.

"Then go! The sooner the better."

"Okay, okay, just a second." I started to run around in circles, while I waved my arms at the same time.

"What are you doing?" said Miley sharply.

"I'm making myself exhausted so it'll look more real when I get there," I replied patiently.

"Oh. Good idea."

"Always the tone of surprise," I muttered before sprinting as fast as I could to Rico's.

This running, combined with what I had already done, made it so that I was genuinely out of breath by the time I reached the Surf Shop. Jackson looked at me curiously.

"Picked a fight against that six-year-old girl again, Oken?"

"Jackson," I panted, making a rather large effort to ignore his remark, "Lilly-"

"What about Lilly?" said Jackson, suddenly serious, and I felt, among other things, pleased that the smirk on his face vanished immediately.

"She had an accident in the water! We got her out, but she needs CPR!"

Jackson's seriousness turned to panic. All satisfaction that came from knowing that he was acting according to plan as he jumped directly over the counter of Rico's was replaced by agony as he bowled me over in the process. Jackson didn't seem to notice, instead running to the beach faster than I had ever seen him.

I gingerly touched the spot on my right shoulder blade where Jackson's elbow had caught me, to be rewarded with sharp pain. "That's gonna leave a mark," I said miserably to myself before I got up and followed him.

I was only about halfway to the place where our towels were when I saw Jackson get there. It didn't really matter though, as I could see him clearly even as I ran. I barely heard Miley tell him that she and I had dragged Lilly onto her towel as he got on his knees and bent over her body.

This was it. The moment our debt to Lilly was repaid - and the throbbing pain in my under my right shoulder became worthwhile. With our combined assets of Jackson having taken a CPR class and Lilly liking chocolate milkshakes almost as much as me, it really was a good plan, all things considered, despite that it involved _drugging_ our best friend. Lilly falls asleep, we tell Jackson she's drowning, he does mouth-to-mouth, she wakes up, and everything else falls into place. It was foolproof.

So imagine my surprise when Jackson put one hand on top of the other, set them on the center of Lilly's chest, and pushed down with all of his body weight.

Lilly's eyes shot open, accompanied by a harsh sound somewhere between an exhale, a cough, and "What the _crap_?!"

With a surprised yelp of his own, Jackson jumped away from Lilly so hurriedly that he landed facedown in the sand. By the time he lifted his head back up and wiped the sand out of his eyes, Lilly was giving him a death glare that could've melted steel.

"What was _that_?!" she screamed.

Jackson seemed to be momentarily lost for words. Judging by the expression on his face, it looked to me like he was torn between joy that she was not drowning after all and fear that she would rip his arms out of their sockets for about the same reason.

"_Well_?!" Lilly leapt to her feet, and Jackson did the same. People were beginning to stare at them.

"I - Oli - drown - CP-" he stammered, moving his fingers in different directions through midair as if trying to solve a math problem, "y-you're alive," he finished weakly.

"You don't say," said Lilly nastily. "You wanna explain what that has to do with anything before we don't have that in common anymore?" Jackson's legs were bent slightly at the knees, as if to run for his life the moment Lilly made a move in his direction.

"But Oliver said that you were drowning and you needed CPR!" Jackson shouted in desperation.

Cold dread wormed its way through my insides as Lilly and Jackson simultaneously turned to me. Now I knew why Jackson had been fearing for his health, and this feeling was not made any better by the fact that there were two accusatory looks in my direction. At that same moment, the temperature suddenly dropped a bit and the sunlight dimmed. I looked up to see that a cloud had blotted out the sun.

"Uh... just kidding?" I said feebly. I hesitated, searching for something else to say, then turned heel and ran back up the beach.

Maybe if I hung myself from one of the palm trees around Rico's, no one would notice.

* * *

I put a small homage to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this chapter. See if you can spot it.


	7. Love Pains

Also, nobody made any guesses about the homage to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last chapter, although some did comment on having read or not yet reading it. Well, there was a part in last chapter where Oliver says to Miley, "Always the tone of surprise." This is a slightly recurring line in the book.

* * *

**Chapter 7**

**Love Pains**

"I'm going to kill Oken next time I see him."

"Really? Can I help?"

Lilly and I were sitting across each other at Rico's. After the whole CPR Incident, she had naturally decided that she didn't feel much like surfing today. Instead, she had, for some reason, forgiven me pretty quickly. Even more mysteriously, she had taken to using the time in which she would otherwise be in the water talking to me. Not that I was complaining; every word that came out her mouth brought with it a feeling of elation that such a beautiful girl was acknowledging my very existence.

_I need serious help_.

But I knew that already, ever since I found myself falling for my little sister's best friend, so I was not particularly bothered. Miley _had_ been telling me that for several years previous, but it had taken Lilly for me to actually start believing it. I smirked at her comment as I fiddled needlessly with the stuff behind the counter. Of course, I'd prefer not to do anything while talking to her but stare at her beautiful face, but that would look suspicious. I had to adopt a tone of mild boredom just to keep my cover, which I hated.

The truth was, a very significant portion of my happiness could be better described as relief. When Oken told me that Lilly was drowning, that she needed CPR immediately or else she would die... when I saw her lying there helpless on the sand, unconsious and unmoving...

It was easily the scariest moment of my life.

And when I did the first chest compression, she sprang right back up, just like she always did, almost like she was back from the dead. Opposite to when I had seen her just before that, it was probably the happiest moment of my life. Heck, I had to use all my self-restraint to keep myself from hugging her right then and there. Considering her mood at that point, that probably wouldn't have been among the wisest of decisions.

"Hey, Jackson?" asked Lilly timidly after a few silent moments.

"Yeah?" I looked up to see that her gaze was directed primarily at her knees.

"Thanks," she said in little more than a mutter.

"For what?" I said, thoroughly perplexed.

"For what you did earlier." Her voice was steadily getting quieter.

"You mean ruining your nap on the beach and almost breaking one of your ribs?" I steered clear of pointing out exactly where I'd been forced to place my hands to perform such a feat.

"No." She looked up, directly into my eyes, and her voice was suddenly louder, more forceful. "For trying to save my life. I know I wasn't actually in danger," she added quickly in response to me being about to interupt, "but you thought I was, and you came to save me. That means a lot. So... thanks," she finished.

I was momentarily speechless. A dozen different contradictions to what she said popped into my head. _Anyone would have done the same thing... It was no trouble at all... I'd do it to anyone I saw who needed it..._ but I couldn't quite manage to deny this praise. All I could do was stammer an awkward, "Y-you're welcome."

_Maybe I won't kill Oken after all_, I thought.

Perhaps she picked up some of the vibes of my inner doubts, because she said, "It's just not really the kind of thing you'd really expect from you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked sharply; the glowing warmth I received from her thank you was suddenly beginning to plummet.

"Well, let's face it, you're not exactly the most responsible guy in the world."

"What?!" I said loudly. "I'm not irresponsible. I'll have you know that I had a puppy back in Tennessee."

"What happened to it?" Lilly inquired curiously.

I furrowed my brow and stared off into space in deep thought. "I don't know."

Lilly snorted, to which I maturely replied by sticking my tongue out.

"_And_ I did the laundry last night, which included my dad's favorite shirt," I continued.

"You must be really proud of yourself," she said, her voice full of amusement.

"I am," I replied defiantly, which caused her to giggle for some reason.

"Well, thanks anyway," she said much more lightheartedly than last time, and, while it wasn't nearly as much as then, my spirits rose a little higher.

"As long as I'm here, can I get another shake?" she asked.

"Sure," I answered. "Chocolate, right?"

"As always."

Those were the little things that defined Lilly, I reflected to myself as I whipped up her milkshake. How she never got any kind of shake but chocolate. How she always wore a hat of some kind, unless she was busy styling her beautiful blonde hair. How her mood could change from angry to cheerful in the blink of an eye. A bunch of small, seemingly mundane facts that combined themselves to make one amazing person, just like many twenty-two minute episodes made up a great TV show.

Wondering briefly if there was a good mental therapist in Malibu, I handed Lilly her shake, which she eagerly began to inhale.

I was somewhat surprised she ordered another one even after what the Incident. She had already told me the story of what had happened. After we all arrived at the beach, she had drunk as much of her shake as she could before she had gone into the water. Within minutes, she felt like me during one of Ms. Kunkle's lessons: sleepy. She barely had time to get on her towel before she dropped off. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I had been pondering what could have caused this. My best conclusion was that there was something in the shake, but that made no sense. Why would someone put an anesthetic in a milkshake? And, more importantly, why didn't it affect Miley or Oliver? So that couldn't be the answer.

There was also the possibility that she was simply still tired from staying up late last night, - Alien 3 was a pretty long movie - but that made even less sense than the previous theory. One of the adjectives in the entire English language that made me think about her the most was "hyper." Besides, she hadn't seemed overly tired on the way here, just a little quiet. Not that I was any different, with what I had let slip out earlier.

The minutes passed. Lilly slowly worked on her chocolate shake, while I contented myself with simply being around her. Every so often, as I served the occasional customer and pretended to sort the merchandice behind the counter, I would glance at her face. I couldn't help it. As I said before, I couldn't just keep looking at her. It's just that whenever I was around her but couldn't look at her, there was a kind of internal torture going on in the tendons of my eyes that could only be cured, at least temporarily, by looking at her again. Then I would have to quickly look away once more while the ache behind my eyes gradually built up again.

The same thing went for my ears. As the silence between us went on, so did this constant, dull pain at the bases. Whenever she spoke, her voice would act like a massage to my ears. It was far superior to any kind of music. Heck, even a particularly loud slurp from her beverage would somehow soothe them.

Let's face it: when it came to Lilly, everything about me was a complete and total wreck.

We were in the midst of another short, pointless discussion that I was thoroughly enjoying when it happened. A tightly packed crowd of very excited teenage girls moved like a school of fish across the beach. It was so dense that I couldn't see what they were actually surrounding. They all also seemed to be talking at once, so I couldn't catch any individual words through the babble. I looked at Lilly questioningly, who looked just as confused as me.

Probably the weirdest thing about it was that the sight looked so... _familiar_. I knew I had seen this sometime before, on this same beach, but the memory felt distant, vague. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something about it also filled me with an immediate sense of dislike.

As if by fate, a small fluctuation occured in the churning mass of females that, for one fleeting moment, parted the throng to reveal the subject of its interest. The quick look that I got consisted of a reasonably muscular body clothed in a tuxedo and deflated parachute for inexplicable reasons and an attractive male face that was well known to just about anybody who watched TV, currently flashing a perfect set of pearly white teeth in a smug smile at the attention the individual was receiving.

It was the face of the one who had taken in Miley, along with Lilly and all the other girls in their school, with his good looks and superficial charms. The one that had led her on a chase that was ultimately doomed, but barely perceptable as such until it was too late. The one that had only failed in crushing her spirit with abandoning her for months on end after reaping its prize from her in the heat of an argument because she, unbeknownst to him, was semi-consciously holding onto an infatuation with Oliver.

Jake Ryan.

Apparently, Lilly saw him in that moment too, because she let out an ear-piercing squeal that caused several of the girls on the outer layer of the crowd to jump. She turned back to me, and the expression of excitement on her face was directly proportional to the inward sinking of my spirits.

"Did you see that?" she asked, her voice much higher and louder than normal.

"Yep. Looks like Jake's back," I answered, making the utmost effort to sound unconcerned rather than jealous. "Why are you so excited? Miley's with Oliver now, thanks to you."

"Yeah," she said with a subtle grin, "but that means Jake's officially available now." A sudden frown creased her forehead. "What's the matter?"

"Whattaya mean?" I said quickly.

"Well, you might wanna look at your hand."

I obeyed, only to find that the fork I had been holding was now bent at a right angle in my clenched fist. I hastily let it go, and it fell on a low shelf in front of me next to a translucent plastic container with holes poked in the top of it as a very loud slurp from above told me that Lilly's milkshake supply was depleted.

"Oh yeah, I accidently do that sometimes," I lied. "Anyway," I pressed on before she could question me about the the fork, "why do you want to go out with him, especially after what he did to Miley?"

"The same reason I like watching Pirates of the Caribbean over and over again." A dreamy look passed over her face at the mere thought of either Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom. I didn't know which, nor did I particularly want to.

"Come on, Lilly. I mean, take away the muscles, the looks, the fame, and what do you have left?"

"You," she answered simply, and the grin on her face got wider.

I spent several seconds trying to come up with a way to reverse this insult, or at least come up with a good come-back as I usually could. I couldn't. And, as if to put me on a timer, the group of girls was beginning to move directly toward Rico's. I eventually forced myself to smile.

"Well, you've had your shake, so good day," I bade her in a determinedly calm voice.

"But-"

"I SAID GOOD DAY!"

With a jump, confused look, and slight shaking of her head, Lilly stood up and left. I watched her retreating form from behind with more than a bit of regret. I didn't want to have to do that, but she couldn't be present when I gave Jerk Ryan what he deserved. She wouldn't like it.

As the crowd moved nearer to me, I stooped over the little plastic container and opened the lid. The bottom of it was filled with sand, saturated with seawater. A small crab was half-buried in it so that the eyes and pincers were exposed. I smiled down at it affectionately.

"Alright, Ebirah. Time for you to fulfill your life's purpose." I took the bent fork lying on the shelf and poked the crustaceon with it. Ebirah bristled up at once, attempting to nip the prongs with its claws. "That's right," I cooed. "Get angry, get reeeaaally angry."

Once the crab was sufficiently agitated, I dropped it into an empty cup, where it continued to wave its claws at the air menacingly. I took all the lids and straws so Jake would be forced to take a drink directly out of the cup. I heard him say, "Now ladies, ladies, I'm feeling a little thirsty, so I'm gonna have to ask you in front to let me through so I can get a shake," in his slow, overexaggerated voice that sounded like he was already reciting lines from a TV show script. "Any volunteers to pay for it?" A deafening chorus of "Me! Me!"s sounded at once, as if the TV star didn't have enough money to buy the shake himself.

Disgusted by his last sentence as I was, I smiled malevolently to myself as I scooped a collection of sand into the cup.

* * *

"So he did that to you as he was jumping over the counter?" said Miley, eying the large purple mark on my shoulder.

"Uh huh," I replied somewhat moodily.

"Aw, how romantic," she said adoringly. I threw her a dirty look. "And horrible," she added quickly.

She and I had wisely decided to lay low after the failed first attempt. We were down the beach from Rico's, so they could find us when it was time to go if they wished.

"So, got any more bright ideas?" I said with a hint of annoyance still evident in my voice.

"Not yet," she said absently, still observing the bruise. "That looks really painful. How does a shoulder massage sound?'

I smiled at the suggestion. "Sounds great," I answered.

"Good, because I could really use one." She turned her back to me expectantly.

I was just about to answer this turning of the tables when a loud scream from up the beach caused both of us to turn our heads. Someone wearing a tuxedo and with a deployed parachute dragging behind him was running from the same direction, still howling like the world was on fire. He was thrashing his arms and head around viciously, so it was impossible to get a good look of his face. As he passed by us, I did get a blurry view of his face, but what struck me the most was that something was hanging onto his tongue - was that a _crab_?

And then he was gone, the only remnants of his existence a thin trail of blood from his tongue on top of a fresh set of footprints, the confused looks on our faces, and that distantly familiar picture of what he looked like.

I turned to Miley. "Was that..."

"Could it be..."

We both shook our heads. "Nah," we said at the same time.

* * *

I don't know about you, but I think that was probably the most satisfying chapter I've ever written.

Obviously, this is ignoring the continuity of the show. As you may recall, I began work on Sweet Hearts before the second season, and I began writing this story before Jake came back. I already established last story that they were still in middle school, and this takes place a week or two afterwards. I wasn't actually going to include this part at first, but **Chaotic-obsession4eva** said a couple times in her reviews that she would like to see it happen, so you can thank her for that, as do I. Besides, it was just too fun to write for me to resist.

Also, for those of you unfamiliar with the Godzilla movies, Ebirah is the name of a giant lobster from them, so I named the crab in this story after it. Not quite the same thing, but hey, it was the best I could do.


	8. The Conspiracy and the Closet

If you all just pulled out your pistols and blew several holes in your computer screen after just seeing my name, then good, because I deserve it. In fact, this chapter probably would have taken me even longer to write if not for a PM by **America's Angel** reminding me to get off my lazy butt (though in a much more polite way, which I most certainly did not deserve). That was a week ago, too, which shows you how slow I am even then. She deserves some cookies. Don't hold out, I know you guys have some.

* * *

**Chapter 8**

**The Conspiracy and the Closet**

"Me."

"Me."

"Me!"

"Me!"

"_You!_"

"_YOU!_"

"Okay, if you insist."

"Thank you. Wait, hey!"

Jackson's shift was over, and now he was driving us back to his house. I already called my mom and asked her if it was okay for me to spend some extra time with Miley.

Following my undignified little dismissal by Jackson, I decided to do the next best thing; get revenge for what I was now sure would turn into a very large bruise right on my chest. Heck, it still hurt a little just to breathe. I massaged the area semiconsciously.

I really didn't get why he and Miley did it. Sure, I wasn't above a healthy prank every now and then (when we went on a field trip last year to a bee farm, I took the part of a bee poison trap that attracts bees, but not the part that kills them, and rubbed it all over his pants the night before) but at least mine was actually _honorable_. Okay, so having one or two stingers lodged in your butt isn't exactly comfortable - okay, one or two dozen - but having someone press their entire body weight down on one spot while you're asleep, of all situations, just isn't... good. To tell the truth, the whole CPR thing was actually an ingenius idea (_Must have been Miley's idea, then,_ I figured), but not how they used it. All in all, it was a feeble and completely over-the-top prank.

Perhaps it was because I happened to fall asleep right then, and they came up with it on the spot. That would make sense, then, for why it wasn't very good. And that might also partially explain why Oliver was so hesitant in explaining after the prank had been pulled; they probably hadn't planned it well enough to consider what they would say afterwards. That still didn't explain why neither of them laughed at all, though, which you would expect. According to Jackson, I hadn't been asleep for very long before he woke me up, so they wouldn't have had time even to point out key details like that. As for why I suddenly felt so tired when we started paddling out into the water in the first place, I had no idea.

In any case, while it was most definitely not the whole thing, I began my revenge on Oliver by giving him, more than likely, the worst beating in basketball he ever had in his life. Now, naturally, he was making every possible excuse for why he lost except the three obvious ones: I was good, he wasn't, or both.

"It wasn't fair," he insisted. "I should have won."

"Then why didn't you?" I countered.

"I told you, the sun was in my eyes."

"The same sun was in my eyes, Oliver, plus, because of your freakish little prank, it hurt to breathe-" (Jackson shifted uncomfortably in his seat), "and I still creamed you."

I glanced at Jackson. As my attentions for that sort of thing were currently diverted, I wasn't really in the mood to annoy him, even if it meant sacrificing my verbal duel with Oliver. On the contrary, however, for the most part he wore a small smile as we argued, as if amused by it all. Reassured, I turned back.

Oliver shook his head stubbornly in response to my statement. "I'm telling you, Lilly, that was all just luck. I bet you five dollars the next time you try to take the basketball from me, you won't get it. I've got the reflexes of a mongoose." He held up the ball and tossed it back and forth between his hands in what was evidently supposed to be an intimidating gesture.

With absolutely no effort at all, I snatched the ball from his hands right then and there.

"Yeah, a dead mongoose," I said. "That'll be five bucks."

"Wait! I wasn't ready!" He looked ready to throw a tantrum.

"Really? I seem to recall a certain someone saying 'the next time you try to take the basketball from me, you won't get it.'" I held out my hand expectantly.

"I'm getting drained," he grumbled to himself, to my puzzlement, as he fished the money from his pocket and handed it over.

Miley, who, obviously with nothing better to do, had also been listening to us, seemed to find this particularly amusing for some reason that eluded me. She chuckled, and I had to restrain myself from doing the same, but for a different reason; because she had also been in on the prank I had started my revenge on her as well by not telling her Jake was back. Wouldn't _that_ be a surprise when she opened her front door to find the Zombie Slayer standing there. I intended to take a picture once it happened; it would be a good-sized part of my revenge as well, not to mention if I ever needed a good laugh some time. And if I decided that it hadn't fulfilled its full usefullness, well... a little extra blackmail material never hurt, even against your best friend.

I gave a mental shrug. Heck, maybe I'd even post it on the internet. I had no idea where, but I knew one thing: Miley sure wouldn't like it. I smiled. How one simple thing could open up worlds of great possibilities. It would be deeply satisfying to watch my schemes unfold, just like all my others. For the moment, however, I contented myself with simply pondering it all.

_No one messes with Lilly Truscott,_ I thought with something close to smugness. _No one._

Eventually, Jackson pulled up to the house, a sulky silence still coming from Oliver. Without a word - that seemed to be happening a lot lately for some reason - we filed out.

Just to irritate Oliver, I took the basketball and started to spin it on my hand. His response was to close his eyes and stick his nose up with the exact air of a five-year-old determinedly ignoring his parents after failing to buy him a new train set.

"Come on, Oliver, you're acting like a little kid."

"I am not," he returned with unnecessary force. "Now give me back my ball or I won't be your friend." He grabbed the basketball from my fingertips and moodily held it to his chest like a newborn baby.

I gave Miley a glance that plainly said, _I don't know what you see in him._ Her answer was a wobbly shrug born of trying very hard to hold in a fit of giggles. Jackson, shaking more than a bit himself, opened the door, and I was instantly assaulted by a wide variety of pictures and sounds.

The source of these came from the general area the TV was in. Meshed together were images of a futuristic warzone and the sounds of all variety of weapons. Two Covenant Jackals stood still in the front, save for the aim of their plasma pistols, which were repeatedly discharging both regular and overcharged shots. Further behind them were three Grunt Minors, milling around nervously even as they fired their own plasma pistols, and a Veteran Elite, which was accurately wielding a Carbine. Several Drones buzzed around in the air, adding sharp, purple shards of crystal and more plasma pistol shots into the fray.

The player was holding a Battle Rifle, and using it extremely well. There was no pause as whoever-it-was took aim at each of the Drones in turn even as they were jumping randomly about to dodge the hail of energy bolts and fired. Three bullets in the head for each, and all of them were dead within two seconds.

This player was good, I knew that instantly, better than me. Clearly very practiced, the kind that regards the final level on Legendary difficulty as pitifully easy. No moment of getting back on track with where the rest of the enemies were existed; the player simply snapped into position and continued to fight. He expertly tossed a fragmentation grenade directly in the center of the aliens, which detonated shortly after, damaging the Elite's energy shields and killing both Jackals and one Grunt.

_B-b-boom. B-b-boom._ Now it was just him and the Elite.

The alien ran forward, firing its Carbine as it did so, even while the player emptied more Battle Rifle ammo into its shields. It raised the Carbine over its shoulders and swung it down full-force. The player skillfully jumped over the melee attack, and with a raspy, hissing sound, the gun was put away and replaced with an Energy Sword. Still in the air, the layer took aim at the top of the Eilte's head and lunged downward. The swing of the sword instantly cut through shields, muscle, and bone, creating a large puddle of purple blood before the Elite's body could even hit the ground.

Through it all, though, one sound rose above all the rest, which came not from the _Halo 2_ gameplay on the TV, but from the couch.

"_Yeeeehaw!_ This sword hits harder'n Aunt Clara when ya wake her up from her daily beauty nap!"

Mr. Stewart paused and touched his cheek tenderly, evidently remembering something painful, which allowed him to catch a glimpse of us standing in the doorway. He hastily threw the controller down.

"I wasn't playin' it!" he said defensively, sticking his hands up to shoulder level (after he had made sure to pause it). "I was just-"

"Making sure it's age-appropriate like any good parent should?" said Jackson, his voice full of undisguised skepticism.

"Yes." He seemed not to notice Jackson's sarcastic tone, or else was responding in kind. He scrolled down the pause menu to "Save and Quit."

"If you're not playing it," said Oliver, "why are you saving it?"

"I haven't decided if it's appropriate yet," came his obviously rehearsed answer. Once the game was finished saving, he turned off the X-box.

"And by the way, Jackson," he said in the tone that usually meant someone had done something wrong - Jackson cringed, clearly recognizing it as well, "remember when I gave you the responsibility of cleaning my laundry yesterday?"

"Why, yes. Yes I do." He stood up a little straighter, some weird gesture of manly pride, I supposed.

"Then, by all means, please explain this."

He pulled out his favorite shirt. Its age was apparent, not by any wear and tear that I could see, but by the shirt itself. It was decorated by a number of colorful patterns and symbols displayed against a black background. Obviously not something that you would find in stores nowadays. But, in a weird way, I could sorta see why Mr. Stewart liked it so much. Granted, there was the time period it was from, but even by today's standards, it was almost semi-cool.

It was also small enough to fit a moderately-sized toddler.

"...uh... you've gained a _lot_ of weight?" guessed Jackson blankly. I honestly couldn't tell whether he was joking or not.

"That's right, son. Way to flatter the man while he's deciding your punishment. While he's doin' that, you mind reading him what it says on this tag?"

Jackson took the shirt and squinted at the tag on the inside. "_Dry clean only_," he read.

"Exactly."

"But that's exactly what I did. After I washed it, I threw it in the dryer."

A very long silence followed this, the sights consisting mainly of our looks at Jackson, which ranged from slightly confused pity to are-you-kidding-me? (the last belonging to Miley), to his own look back at us, clearly confused as to what he had done wrong. Meanwhile, I had the distinct impression that someone, somewhere, was laughing, as if watching us on a TV screen, or possibly reading about us.

Eventually, the silence had to break. "Well," said Mr. Stewart, with a slightly mournful rubbing together of his hands, "if y'all need me, I'll be out in the back buryin' my shirt. Or crematin' it. Maybe both." He began to walk out. "Oh, and by the way, Miles, your blouse is unbuttoned."

"Ooh, let me get that." Oliver bounced forward with his hands already outstretched.

"Let her get it," said Mr. Stewart said with an iron vice behind his words.

"Even better," said Oliver immediately, stuffing his hands so far down into his pockets that I doubted he'd be able to withdraw them without a crowbar. Mr. Stewart gave a satisfied smile and exited.

Another short silence.

"What did I do?" Jackson asked himself innocently. No one bothered to try explaining it to him. I simply shrugged; at least he looked cute when he was confused.

* * *

Seriously, WHAT DID I DO?!

* * *

_Well, this has been eventful,_ I reflected. _Our only attempt has failed, we're right back where we started, _and _Jackson didn't even get punished._

The last was done only half-heartedly. To tell the truth, I wasn't nearly as annoyed with this fact as I would be otherwise. Ever since Oliver and I decided to get Jackson and Lilly together, a lot of the natural sibling rivalry seemed to have temporarily evaporated. Even insulting him had only a small amount of pleasure left in it, which had never happened before.

I shook my head, as if it could clear out this feeling. We needed to get this over with, and fast, so I could snap out of it.

Jackson was rummaging around for something in the closet. I neither knew nor cared what it was, yet, somehow, a small part of my consciousness paid close attention to it, for reasons I could not explain, like iron shavings attracted to a magnet.

"Hey, Lilly," called Jackson without turning around. "Can you help me find my dinosaur costume?"

"...precisely _why_ do you want to find a dinosaur costume?" she asked.

"Because I feel like watching Jurassic Park and it'll help set up the mood," he replied casually.

"Oh, okay," she said with a nod, as if this explanation was perfectly logical, then went to his side and began digging through the contents of the closet.

_Ping._

My head snapped around toward the sudden sound. I found myself looking at Jackson and Lilly, but nobody else had seemed to hear the-

_Ping._

There it was again, more insistent, definitely coming from the closet. Again, only I seemed to notice it. Even though it was clearly coming from the closet, it almost seemed like part of it resonated within my own head, like the sound was being directed to that precise spot somehow.

_Ping._

And then I understood. _The closet._

I looked over at Oliver, who had now returned to his sullen demeanor that had been his default since the first attempt failed. I noiselessly waved my arms at him to get his attention. When he finally noticed, I gestured first to me and him, then to Lilly and Jackson, walked in place facing their direction, then thrust my arms out far and swung my right hand in a horizontal eliptical motion before reaching out delicately with my thumb and pointer finger pressed together and rotating them ninety degrees.

Oliver's face remained blank.

My shoulders instantly slumped. I irritably gestured for him to follow my lead, pressing one finger to my mouth to indicate silence. Clearly still bemused, he followed. Slowly, silently, we crept forward, until we were within a yard of Llly and Jackson, whose faces were still mercifully buried in the closet's detritus.

I pointed at him, then Jackson. Thankfully, he understood this command, though clearly not what I had in mind for it. He circled around until he was directly behind Jackson, while I did the same with Lilly. Then, I pulled my arms far back exaggeratedly, palms wide and facing Lilly's back. At last understanding flitted across his face, which was almost immediately replaced by still more bewilderment as to why I wanted to do this. Obviously, however, I couldn't explain it to him, so I jerked my head in a small shake and repeated the arms gesture. Oliver shrugged wearily and did the same.

"Jackson, I don't think there's any dinosaur costume in here," came Lilly's muffled voice.

I lowered all but one of my fingers on my left hand. _One..._

"It's gotta be in here somewhere. Keep looking."

I raised another finger. _Two..._

"I'm telling you, there's no-"

_Three!_

Oliver and I shifted all our weight forward into our arms, shoving Lilly and Jackson into the closet. Before they were even completely in there, I was slamming the door shut. Loud cries of surprise and sudden pain came from behind it, but I ignored them, instead focusing my attention on locking the door.

Only one problem: _there was no lock._

Because Lilly and Jackson were still yelling from inside the closet, I managed to lean over and say to Oliver in a low voice, "You hold the door shut, I'll get some furniture."

Before he could protest or ask what was going on, I darted over to the living room and began hauling one of the chairs over to the closet.

_Stupid-weak-upper body-strength,_ I thought to myself furiously as the chair moved agonizingly slowly across the floor. I glanced upward. Oliver was leaning against the door with all his might, now that Lilly and Jackson were actually trying to get themselves out.

I had just reached stairs when it happened; Lilly and Jackson must have both pushed very hard and at the same time, because the door flew open. The side struck Oliver full-force across the face, who fell to the ground. Fortunately, the door opened so hard that it bounced off the wall and closed again, and judging by the loud thump and the fresh stream of cries from inside, one of them must have been thrown off balance and landed on top of the other.

There was nothing for it; I abandoned the chair, yanked Oliver to his feet, and dragged him out of the house in a sprint. It was all I could come up with. They may have accepted that it was a prank for the first attempt, but how would we explain trying to lock them in a closet together?

"Where are we going?" asked Oliver, who had now managed to run on his own two feet.

"Anywhere!"

"Gee, thanks for clearing that one up."

Well, what did he expect? Did he really think I had time to think up solutions for everything that might have gone wrong in this plan? But it had been done, and there was nothing we could do to change that. We just had to adapt; now all we had to do was get Lilly and Jackson together while staying out of sight. Easy.

_Who am I kidding?!_

* * *

There you go. The second attempt, after a very long wait in terms of real life, but a very short wait in terms of the story and the number of chapters.

Well, in case I wasn't clear enough about it (which I probably wasn't), the idea was for Miley and Oliver to lock Lilly and Jackson in the closet until they got together. The idea in question is once again the courtesy of **Chaotic-obsession4eva**, so give her whatever cookies you have left (and make sure you don't give any to me). But, unfortunately, it clearly did not work, because then there would be an even greater reason for you guys to come after me with torches and spears. I wasn't about to end the story right then and there, was I?

Now, I know some of you were expecting some drama-ness and/or conflicts of some kind what with Jake being back in this chapter, but I ultimately decided against it. It was this decision in part that caused this chapter to be so late. I never intended originally for Jake to show up in any chapter but the last one, but several people said that they'd like to see some more of him, causing a conflict between Lilly and Jackson, Miley and Oliver, or both. However, since I had never even really considered giving him a bigger role, I found that I couldn't really come up with anything good for him. In this story, you can all be pretty sure that his appearance is only for the pleasure of me and you guys with some very underhanded and deserving comedy that results in mild injury to him, which is probably all he deserves to amount to anyway.


	9. Almost Perfect

**Chapter 9**

**Almost Perfect**

You know, somehow, whenever I imagined a situation with Lilly and I in a closet together, it was never quite like this.

For instance, the mental scene would usually not involve a very large amount of dull pain on various places on my body, caused by colliding with the various contents and wall of the closet, nor would we have been suddenly shoved and locked inside it against our will or my arm have been twisted in an extremely uncomfortable position behind my back.

As for the fact that I was currently lying on top of her... well, I do have a rather active imagination...

Nonetheless, this was not exactly the most ideal time to relive those particular fantasies; even in normal circumstances, I invariably lost at least some control of what I did or said when I was around here, which is why I always had to really think about my actions before I did them. Not one of my strong suits. With many a muttered "sorry," without consciously keeping track of what I was saying (obviously a very dangerous thing to do), I attempted to get myself up.

I quickly realized that this was more easily said than done. Because of my current position, I couldn't really lean against one of the walls without digging into Lilly's ribs with my knee. To further complicate things, Lilly was attempting to get herself up as well, despite the fact that I was still on top of her - _Do NOT think that,_ I told myself furiously - and there was also the combined weight of about twenty articles of clothing that had decided to take a rest on my head and shoulders when we were both shoved in.

I lunged my body forward without the use of my hands in a vain attempt to get myself upright, pressing my feet to the ground to use as a focal point. I moved up about a foot, arms flailing as if the air resistance could push me forward enough, then began to fall back down. I positioned my hands perpendicular to the ground to break my fall.

Lilly suddenly let out a sharp yelp, as I felt my right hand land on something... _squishy_.

More out of reflex than anything, I sprung away, directly at the closet door. Agonizing pain suddenly pierced my skull; I had hit the corner of the doorknob with my head in mid-jump. Disorientated, in pain, and keenly aware that Lilly would be able to see how fiercely I was still blushing once I did it, I reached up and at last opened the closet door.

Everything tumbled out in a heap: coats, jackets, belts, suits, hats, jeans, boots, and a pair of exceptionally sore and bewildered teenagers. And just to make the overall picture more wretched, awkward, or any other negative adjective, guess which part of that list landed right on top of me?

I wasn't sure whether it was a good or a bad thing that Lilly's face was as red as mine surely was. Either way, the fact that it was a mere inch away from mine was decidedly _not_ good. Over and over again, I repeatedly told myself as firmly as I could, _Don't-kiss-her-whatever-you-do-don't-kiss-her-what ever-you-do-don't-kiss-her-whatever-you-do-stop-vi sualizing-it-stop-visualizing-it-stop-visualizing- it-why-isn't-she-getting-off-why-isn't-she-getting -off-why-isn't-she-getting-off - Wait, seriously, why the crap isn't she getting off?_

It was true; Lilly just stared back down at me, the color in her face not receding and the same slightly shocked, ridiculously cute look on her face. Her golden hair softly brushed the sides of my face, and I could smell it very clearly and very easily; it smelled somewhat floral (in some deep corner of my mind I saw the poetic touch to her smelling like flowers when her name was Lilly), and very natural, not like it was because of any shampoo. Overall, the best way to summarize it was that smelled like... _her_. There was no use to try to find any more accurate way to say it, because I knew I'd never find one.

Suddenly, her eyes widened, as if snapping out of some internal struggle, and she scrambled off, this time with her being the one saying sorry repeatedly under her breath. I spared a minute just to catch my breath, determinedly not looking at Lilly. In fact, I simply stared at a lone sock that was just lying there, and made it the center of my focus, so that I wouldn't find myself looking at an area _around_ Lilly and _accidentally_ catch a glimpse of her; I was fairly sure that if I did, I wouldn't be able to take my eyes off.

Eventually, I found myself speaking - it sounded very shaky. "We should, uh, clean this up, I suppose."

She didn't say anything, but I assumed that she nodded, because I heard her stand up and begin picking up some stuff. I did the same, and this time I couldn't help but glance at her now and then. Actually, I'd just openly stare as I worked until she made any motion that remotely looked like she would turn to me and see what I was doing, in which case I would quickly turn away and wait for about ten seconds before risking a glance back again to check if she was still watching.

Eventually, all of the loose articles of clothing had been forcibly stuffed into the upper regions of the closet, leaving nothing else to look at besides Lilly without looking suspicious. At least my face had stopped burning. Mostly.

This time, it was her who spoke first. "So... what was _that?_"

"What was what?" Inwardly, I prayed to God that she wasn't referring to where my hand had accidentally wandered prior to our escape.

"Gee, Jackson, only the fact that we were just shoved into and locked inside of a closet," she said a bit viciously.

_Thank you. I'l see ya on Sunday,_ I thought, complete with a grateful glance to the ceiling, despite the fact that Lilly's tone automatically took my relief down a few notches. I turned back to her.

"Well, in that case, I think we were just shoved into and locked inside of a closet, since you asked."

"Oh, shut up." But she smiled a little all the same before continuing. "So, do you have any theories for _why _Miley and Oliver decided to lock us in a closet?"

The way she put it suddenly made both our eyes widen and our faces redden. Clearly, for her, it was just because it was just because it was she who had unwittingly implied... er, anyway, I knew that it was definitely not for the same reason I was. The thought, despite the fact that I had already been telling myself this very same thing for quite some time, was slightly disheartening.

After several seconds of trying to fight down the blush (unsuccessfully, of course), I answered. "I have a theory."

"What?"

"They've both lost it."

Lilly rolled her eyes, but the smile returned again.

"Actually," I pressed my advantage as we both walked over to the couch and sat, "I'm pretty sure Oken, at least, lost it when she started going out with Miley."

"Well, it's good that you think so," she said. "I'd be worried for your sanity even more than I already am if you could see where he was coming from, since she's your sister and all."

"That's not what I meant," I said with a sharp look, which then morphed into a shrug to accompany the words, "Although that is true."

"What, then?"

"Well, think about it," I said, trying to lay it out carefully for her. "She's Hannah Montana."

"Wow, really? I didn't know." She widened her eyes exaggeratedly.

"Which means," I continued patiently, "she's basically rich."

"But she doesn't get control of the money-"

"Until she's eighteen, I know. But they do give her a small share of it every couple concerts for her own use."

"Oookay. So?"

_"So,_ that means Oken's going out with a girl that has ten times more money than him, and potentially about one thousand times more money than him."

I paused to let this sink in. Somehow, however, she wasn't getting the message. She just sat there and frowned, evidently trying to sort out the obvious. Apparently, however, the issue in a relationship of who has more money was completely foreign to her. After several seconds, she gave in.

"What's your point?"

"Well, think about it. I mean, she's the girl and he's the guy, but she'll be the one buying him a bunch of gifts and taking him to all these expensive restaurants..." I frowned. "Dang, what _is_ my point?"

Lilly gave a soft laugh and shook her head slightly, for reasons unknown to me. However, I distinctly heard her mutter, "Boys."

"I heard that."

"Well, you were kinda supposed to."

I glared at her, and she glared back. For a moment, we just sat there looking at each other vehemently. Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to look on the outside. On the inside, I was grasping the opportunity to just sit there with a good excuse to look into her eyes, to simply stare without having to look away. Beautiful eyes, a bright, cheerful blue, nearly always twinkling with an almost childlike perkiness, even when they were narrowed at me like they were. It would be so easy just to continue the rest of my existence by getting lost in them, never having to look away and return to the cruel world in which I wasn't free to gaze into their depths and their equally amazing owner did not return my feelings.

I caught myself at just the right moment. Lilly stopped with the glaring, and I did the same. It would've been awkward if I had really just gone on looking without realizing the little exchange was over. In fact, I realized right then that all of my thoughts about Lilly while I was looking into her eyes had only taken a second or two to complete themselves, like a compact file on a computer, all without real need of words to describe it. The human mind was definitely an exceptionally strange, yet somehow wonderful thing.

And so our conversation strayed to other things only vaguely related, which led in turn to other things only vaguely related to _those_, so that, before too long, we were on a completely different subject than Miley and Oliver. In fact, for no reason at all, I soon found myself walking beside her, still discussing whatever came to either of our minds. We just... talked. For no reason that any amount of logic would accurately explain, it was far more enjoyable then you'd think it would have been. Then again, I had already figured out for myself that logic and love didn't go together; after all, even though she meant so much more to me than that, she was still my little sister's best friend.

"Really?" she asked when I expressed some of these thoughts to her after running out of things to bring up - not the love parts, of course, but that it was really fun talking to her and hanging out with her. She stared up at me, her two blue pools wide and... what was that emotion? Hopefulness?

"Well, yeah," I said. We were currently standing in my room. "I mean, you're just really fun to be around. You're not afraid to just do something silly or be yourself."

"And that's a good thing?" she asked with a half-smile and something close to sarcasm in her voice.

"No," I said, completely serious. Then I gave her my own smile. "It's perfect."

I was suddenly afraid that I had said too much, that I had made my feelings too clear, that at any second Lilly would jump away from me in realization and disgust - but these fears were instantly quelled by how she was looking at me. "Flattered" didn't cut it; she just stood there, eyes still wide, a beautiful smile splayed across her perfect lips, and emanating so much temptation to kiss her right then and there that it should be made illegal.

The atmosphere, however, was shattered by a loud crash from downstairs, followed by a muffled, equally loud, "JACKSON!"

Apparently, Dad had decided to open the closet.

Silently cursing the fact that we hadn't bothered to arrange the clothes in a fashion so that they wouldn't bury the next person who wanted to put on a hat, I said to Lilly, "And _that_ is my cue to leave."

I ran out to the balcony and experimentally touched the brick wall with my fingertips; sadly, they didn't stick. When my super spidey powers finally kicked in, this kind of thing would be a lot easier. However, I did manage to move a chair so that I could get a good enough grip on the wall to yank myself onto the roof. I looked down, gave the now-grinning Lilly a wave, and vanished over the rooftop.

_If only I could web swing,_ I thought, _the effect would have been a lot cooler._

* * *

You can definitely thank **daisy617** for... well, quite frankly, this entire chapter. If not for her suggestion in her last review, I would have just skipped the whole Lackson-y closet thing and the events that followed and just gone straight to what will be Chapter 10, once I write it. Oh, and I would also just like to mention that she would never, under any circumstances, or by any means, kill any number whatsoever of small children. I also don't expect any of you other than her to understand why I brought that up, unless anyone makes a habit of reading all the reviews for the story Wishes. I guess you could call it an inside joke.

Please review, and Happy Godzilla Day (today's his fifty-third birthday)!


	10. Third Time's The Charm

**Chapter 10**

**Third Time's The Charm**

Oliver and I were laying in the bushes behind my back porch, partially to help conceal ourselves from Lilly and Jackson, and partially because of the recent physical demands of the last few minutes. I'd never noticed how heavy that chair was before now. I could tell Oliver was more exhausted than me, though. He had, after all, been responsible for holding the closet door, which I knew took more effort than moving the chair; after all, chairs don't ram themselves against you in an attempt to get you out of the way. I also noted with an involuntary shudder the large, rectangular mark on his right cheek, which was already a brilliant red and quickly progressing to a nasty shade of purple.

I'd chosen the bushes because I figured that, in the event of Lilly and Jackson actually deciding to come and look for us, they'd search the house first. Then, when they concluded that we weren't there, they wouldn't really bother looking outside because, after all, we had all of Malibu to hide in. This way, we could also stay close to them in case either of us came up with anything.

Of course, by this point, I was out of ideas. I had carefully planned out the perfect scheme last night, only for it to fall completely apart at the smallest detail. Then I had come up with a last-minute, but seemingly good enough plan, only for it to fail as well, just because our closet didn't have a lock. No matter what we did, it seemed that some unseen force thwarted us every time. What was I doing wrong? Were our efforts doomed from the start?

I looked over to find that Oliver was staring at me, and even though the rapidly forming bruise probably would have made a smile look more like a grimace, it was clear that he was not happy. Worse, it was simultaneously asking, _What now_? (and in no polite manner), which I had no answer to. So I decided to resolutely remain silent.

This silent battle of wills lasted for all of five minutes, during which we found it in us to sit up, before Oliver finally said, "Well?" Predictably, his tone was far from encouraging.

I chewed on the tip of my tongue subconsciously, trying - and failing - to come up with something. Anything.

"...We'll just have to lay low for awhile and make sure our next plan doesn't have anything wrong with it," I managed after ten full seconds, talking slowly to weigh the words so that the all too obvious subliminal message of "I have no idea" didn't appear too evident. If the look on Oliver's face was any indication, the attempt was failing just as miserably as I thought.

"And that's it then, is it?"

"Oh, come on, Oliver. I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something-"

"Great. You do that," he said with a bitterness that surprised me. He turned away.

"What is it?" I asked tenderly after a few moments. He turned back around, and the mark on his face looked worse than ever.

"Oh, nothing's wrong. Just that you're always the one coming up with all the plans when this was my idea in the first place, and I'm the one on the front lines doing all the work and then taking all the punishment."

"_You're_ doing all the work?" I echoed, firing up at once at his words. "At least I'm actually trying to come up with plans, when all you do in the meantime is come up with Somna-whatever."

"Oh yeah, that's right," he said as we both stood up, glaring at each other. "That is all I do, is it? Nevermind how I'm gonna need more plastic surgery on my face than Michael Jackson's got to get rid of this bruise. Predictable. I work, and I slave, and what thanks do I get?"

"Well I'm busting my butt every other night doing concerts and putting bread on the table for both of us, and all you do is sit around on the couch all day watching old Godzilla movies and eating Doritos."

Oliver seemed particularly offended by that one, to my vindictive pleasure. "Well ex_cuse _me for trying to have a little fun. Maybe it's because _you_ never take me out anymore!"

"Yeah?" At this point, had we been paying attention to it, we were in imminent danger of being heard by Lilly and Jackson from inside the house, and that was with the glass door still closed and the shades still drawn over them. "Well, maybe I would if _you_ fixed yourself up a little!"

"Maybe I'd be able to if _you_ ever got me a new dress!"

I was about to retort when the faintest amount of logic chose that particular moment to inject itself into the argument, and I found myself frowning in confusion when I should have done so automatically several exchanges ago.

"Wait, wait, wait, Oliver. What are we saying? We sound like an old married couple." I didn't add the part that, if possible, disturbed me even more: he sounded like the wife.

To my bewilderment, Oliver looked more affronted than ever. "Oh, so now I'm old, huh?" He shook his head solemnly. "And I gave you the best years of my life. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got cramps."

With that, he stuck his nose into the air and theatrically made his way over to the adjacent yard.

_...Well, they say that fights are a sign of a healthy relationship,_ I thought in a vain effort to convince myself that this was anything remotely close to normal before I gave up and ran after him.

Thankfully, as I had no earthly idea how to do so, I was not required to snap Oliver out of it; a few feet across the neighboring lawn, he stopped abruptly and turned back around, wearing the same confused expression I had a few moments ago. He spent a couple seconds in silence, apparently trying to puzzle out what had just happened, before he shook his head in defeat and reassumed his former resentful look.

While part of me was still preoccupied with pondering the question of whether the world had gone mad, most was analyzing the dialogue of our... um, fight. Apart from the comments more closely resembling those belonging to a forty-year-old woman, I realized that he was... _right_. From the start, I had assumed command of the situation and never thinking once that Oliver might have any ideas to contribute. And I had always assigned him the jobs that required the actual execution of the plans. My inner justification, for those few flashes of moments when I mentally acknowledged it, was that I had come up with the idea in the first place, so making Oliver do the dirty work made it fair. In a way, this was true, after all, and there hadn't exactly been much time to sit down and have an inner debate about it. But that didn't change the fact that it was selfish. He'd come up with the idea in the first place, and I'd immediately cut him out of everything meaningful.

I stood there mulling this over for a long time, staring into Oliver's face as he stared back at mine. Finally, I said as tentatively as possible, "Oliver?"

"Yeah?" He still sounded somewhat testy, but, perhaps because of my submissive tone, his voice and expression were softened slightly.

"I'm sorry."

Whatever Oliver was expecting me to say, judging by the complete morph in his facial expression from resentful to surprised, it wasn't that.

"I... just... I - I'm sorry, Oliver."

It was all I could bring myself to say. I couldn't say how I had automatically assumed control of the situation. I couldn't say how I had buried his significance under my own arrogance. I couldn't say how horrible it was for me to do and to continue doing even after it was clearly demonstrated right in front of me that it was wrong. Just that I was sorry for it.

I don't know what it was - the no doubt bubbling expression on my face or whatever level of genuine apology came through my voice or whatever it was - but in that moment, I knew Oliver understood everything he needed to. And I knew just by looking into the depths of his chocolate-brown eyes that I didn't need to explain myself any further, that he knew that I was really sorry for what I had done and that that was enough for him. There was no need for words, because words would ruin it. All that was needed was for me to absorb his smile and nod and for me to walk into his open arms and hold him close as he did the same.

This lasted for some time and would undoubtedly have gone longer if not for the faint sound of familiar voices coming from the direction of my house. Brought back to reality, we shared a curious look and stealthily crept up to the house, using the bushes for cover. Jackson was doing something on the balcony, with Lilly watching him fondly from close behind. He put his hands up to the wall, took them off, grabbed a chair, and climbed onto the roof before completely vanishing out of sight. Lilly stared at the vacant space where he had been a second before for a moment, then turned and went back inside.

Confused, I turned back to Oliver to find that his brow was wrinkled in deep concentration, for reasons I couldn't fathom. But I could tell immediately that whatever he was thinking, he was on to something, so I patiently waited. Every so often he would nod to himself or mumble something unintelligible under his breath. Abruptly, his eyes widened, his mouth stretched into a wide grin, and he looked so much like he was about to jump out of the cover of the bushes and yell, "THAT'S IT!" that I had to stop myself from reaching over and clamping a hand over his mouth.

"Let me guess," I smirked. "You've come up with something."

"Yes," he replied a little defensively. A hint of his former resentful look crept up his face, as if to challenge me to overrule him.

But I had no intention of doing so. Not this time.

"Well, come on. Let's hear it."

So he told me.

I was careful not to interrupt as he explained it, though new doubts sprang up in my mind with every sentence. It seemed wrong, it _had_ to be wrong, it could _never_ work. But slowly, as he went on, the idea gradually started to take root in my mind, and all of the doubts simultaneously began to whither away and die like a flower in the middle of a desert. The more I thought about it, the more I ran it through my mind, the better it sounded.

"So," he said awkwardly when he was finished, "what do you think?"

I grinned. "Let's get to work."

* * *

I helped Miley carry the ladder from her garage, trying my utmost to be as quiet as possible. It was risky - one wrong move and the ladder would drop with a _clang_ and immediately give us away - but it had to be done if the plan was to succeed.

Everything went smoothly until we came to the back porch. We stopped, just outside the view of the glass doors. Miley instructed me to quietly set down my end of the ladder and check to see if anyone was in the kitchen. I obeyed, making sure not to let go of the ladder until it was already resting on the ground, and peered cautiously around the corner of the window.

True to my luck, Lilly was in the kitchen. Thankfully, her face was buried in the refrigerator, apparently looking for a snack. My stomach rumbled in sympathy, but I forced myself to ignore it and instead turn back to Miley to report Lilly's presence.

"Sweet nibblets," she murmured. "How are we going to get past?"

I shook my head in the absence of a solution and looked back through the door window for no real reason. Lilly was now in clear view, holding a container of chocolate syrup in one hand and pancake syrup in the other. She glanced from side to side, as if checking that no one was looking, then gleefully popped open each of the container lids and began to pour both of the thick, sweet liquids into her mouth at once.

Seizing this unexpected chance, I rounded back on Miley. "Quick, she's busy! We need to move _now_ if we're gonna make it!"

She nodded enthusiastically as I grabbed the front of the ladder and angled it up in the direction of Miley's bedroom. I knew that Lilly would be too preoccupied with engorging herself with syrup to turn around and notice us, like a shark in a feeding frenzy possessing only the thought of _grab-bite-eat-NOW _as it fed, but this would only last as long as the syrup did, which meant that we needed to move as quickly as possible. Luckily, we had already anticipated that speed would be of the essence and had therefore already unfolded the ladder before we started moving it, so setting it up was relatively quick.

Without further hesitation, I started to climb. It was tricky business; I had to move as quickly as possible, yet I had to do so without making any loud noises as I stepped on the rungs, or else flat-out causing the ladder to fall. To maximize my speed, I climbed two steps at a time. It was very difficult to bend my knees so that they didn't collide with the ladder as I did this, but it paid off. My progress was speedy and appropriately silent. At slightly less than halfway up, I felt movement vibrate upwards through the ladder and knew that Miley had gotten on as well.

The height was perfect; the top of the ladder rested snugly on Miley's windowsill. I reached the top, quickly undid the latch, opened the window, and slipped in. I looked back down from inside Miley's room to find her about three-quarters of the way to the top. While this may have at first seemed an adequate distance, I wasn't satisfied. There was no telling how much of the syrup Lilly had gotten through - she could be finishing up the last of it and turning to see the base of the ladder right now, for all I knew. I held out my hand to Miley. She took it and allowed me to pull her at last into the room. There was no time to rest, however; both of us immediately grabbed the ladder and began to carefully pull it upwards - if we were too eager, the ladder could hit the side of the house and put all of our effort to waste. We gradually reeled it in until it was all inside, locked the door to the room, then waited in silence for a few tense moments. When no indication came that Lilly had seen us, we finally allowed ourselves to sigh in relief and exchange weary grins.

Still, we had a limited amount of time to work with, and we soon found ourselves back to work. While Miley went to find the needed supplies in the Hannah closet, it was my job to go into Jackson's room and find a pair of walky-talkies, a job that I knew could easily be the downfall of this mission.

Yet fate seemed to smile on me at that point in time; I found the walky-talkies fairly quickly and nobody even came upstairs at all, which left me free to go back to Miley's room unimpeded. When I returned, she had found several speakers, a specially designed boombox with multiple varieties of jacks, and the needed CD. The cover was a smoothly textured, off-whitish color, like a bedsheet - something I instantly knew just by the decorations that I would not be caught dead listening to. But it would serve our purposes.

We double-checked to make sure we had everything we needed, reviewed the plan one more time, and, thus reassured, set out to leave the house. Just before we went out the door, however, Miley suddenly stopped me and shut it again.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she said, "Wait. If we're going to do this, we have to do it right." With that, she disappeared into the Hannah closet again.

I followed reluctantly to find her buried in a pile of rumpled clothing, apparently searching for something. Now, while I had long since accepted that clothes and jewelery meant as much to girls as food and video games did to guys (though to this day I can't understand it any better than I did then), I felt this was going a little too far.

"What," I said, trying to keep my tone as even as possible, "could possibly be this important?"

"Something that starts with an S and ends with an EX."

My eyes grew as large as lollipops as my stomach tightened into a knot so fast that I momentarily had to fight to keep my balance. I gulped and said warily, "You mean...?"

"Yep," she said cheerfully, surfacing from the pile of clothes with two black jumpsuits. "Spandex." She frowned, apparently just now noticing the look on my face. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head, as if to clear it. "Nothing," I lied.

"Good." She tossed me one of the jumpsuits. "Now hurry up and change."

Unsure of whether to feel relieved or not, I compensated by closing the closet door massaging my temples with one hand before slipping on the black tights.

* * *

Yes, I know, I know. This chapter was definitely not worth three months of waiting. I know there will probably be those of you who say in their reviews that I'm wrong - provided that I get any reviews for this chapter, what with the wait - but I know this was a disappointment. Maybe if it had come earlier, it might have been worth it, but it didn't and it isn't. But it was a necessary chapter and it was the best I can do, so that's all I have to say for myself.

Now, on what may be considered either a darker or a lighter note, depending on the perspective of the reader, either the next chapter or the chapter after it (most likely the former) will be the last. Maybe some of you will be disappointed to see the story go, maybe others will be glad that it's being concluded after the ludicrous amount of time I've been writing it, especially for such a comparatively short story. But that's how it is, so I apologize in advance to anyone belonging to the first category.

Well, that's about all I've got to say. Please review, for those of you with the patience to still be reading this.


	11. None To Go

**Chapter 11**

**None to Go**

My hands tightened around the branch from the bush I was hiding in, twisting and pulling so that the woody appendage was stripped of its prickly leaves and the "gloves" attached to my bodysuit earned a new set of small holes. A few small droplets of blood leaked through them. I gritted my teeth together as hard as I could, trying to keep myself from crying out in agony.

For purposes of stealth itself, the jumpsuit was the perfect tool. The way it wrapped around its wearer as if it was a second skin ensured that there was no possible way for a stray corner of it to be seen protruding from behind one of the bushes. Its black color, only breaking to make a small section of room for the face to look out from, melded with the shrubbery in the dim light, making it look like little more than a shadow and rendering the wearer effectively invisible even when he was moving.

But, aside from its practicality, the spandex bodysuit would have best served the remainder of its existence sitting motionless in Miley's closet for the rest of eternity. Miley had told me that Lilly had worn it back when her Aunt Dolly had come to visit, as part of their hair-brained scheme to get back her tape from Jake.

_That would explain a few things, _I thought fiercely.

While it had probably fit her pretty snugly, my body shape was quite a bit different due to our difference in gender. As such, some parts felt like they were trying to purposely constrict some areas of my body like a hungry python, while other parts were unnecessarily baggy on me, resulting in a maddening itch. The overall effect of these opposing forces made my feel like some unseen force was twisting and manipulating my body as if it was made of clay.

Worse was our differences in size. While the few inches taller I was than her might not seem that much, the jumpsuit was trying its best - and succeeding with flying colors - to remind me _continuously _that she might as well have been the size of Thumbelina, and I the size of Cthulhu. The end result was the curious impression that gravity was malfunctioning and working up and down at once. The material pulled down on my head and shoulders, while simultaneously pulled upward on the soles of my feet and, the worst of it all, that one unique portion of the human anatomy that you do _not _want something to be continuously yanking at. Especially if you're a guy.

My torturous fit was interrupted by my heart leaping to my throat in response to a sudden, noisy crackle of static accompanied by a blaring, unintelligible female voice from the walkie-talkie at my waist. I snatched it and panickingly turned the volume almost to zero, praying that Lilly or Jackson hadn't been around to hear anything. After a few seconds of no noise save for my heart pounding against my chest, I finally felt secure enough to gradually twist the volume dial to a respectable level and murmur, "Repeat, Black Panther?"

"Did you finish positioning Speakers 3 and 4?" came Miley's voice from the other end.

"Affirmative," I replied. "Did you finish with Speakers 1 and 2?"

"Roger."

"Who's Roger?"

"...Are you kiddi - _you're_ the one who wanted to make this whole thing like a Mission: Impossible movie!" I heard her give an exasperated sigh. "It means 'yes,' you donut."

"Speaking of which," I said, an annoyed feeling taking residence in the pit of my stomach for more than one reason, "next time, _I'm _picking our codenames."

"Copy that, Krispy Kreme." I could sense the wicked grin on her face as surely as if she were standing right in front of me.

"And the CD's already in the CD player, then?" I continued on through gritted teeth.

"Positive. Oh, and by the way, there's something you might wanna know."

"Yeah?"

I pair of hands grabbed my shoulders from behind with the strength of a vice and spun me around. I very nearly cried out in surprise and fear, but another hand clamped down over my mouth and held itself there until I could see clearly that my assailant was a widely grinning Miley.

"I'm right behind you," she said, releasing me. I almost collapsed from the conflicting forces of the sudden relief and the adrenaline still pumping through my system.

"Don't. _Do. _That," I muttered as savagely as I could manage in my state. She gave a noncommittal shrug as if to say, _Whatever_, and patiently waited for me to get ahold of myself again. "All set, then?"

"The only thing we still need are the lovebirds themselves," she said, rubbing her hands together in excited anticipation. Unlike me, her jumpsuit seemed to fit her very well (my eyes automatically strayed to some of the tighter-fitting places on her body), and so her enthusiasm was unrestrained. "You ready to lure them here?"

"All set," I answered, a small amount of bravado returning to me. It would serve the plan well that Lilly and Jackson both had above-normal amounts of curiosity.

"Good. Then I better assume my position." She turned and began to move through the foliage.

"Wait," I said, lightly grabbing her arm. She turned back to me, and I spread out out arms hesitantly. "Kiss for good luck?"

She briefly favored me with a combination of wearily sighing and rolling her eyes before leaning in quickly and giving me one small peck - on the cheek. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Gee, thanks," I remarked sourly, turning away from her.

Suddenly, something latched itself onto the back of my neck, forced my head sideways, and yanked it forward so hard that I nearly lost my balance. My reflexive scream was immediately muffled by the presence of something warm, moist, and sweet-tasting that was mashing itself over my mouth, accompanied by the sensation of my tongue being sucked forcibly out of my mouth with the strength of a vacuum cleaner. Then, with a loud noise that sounded remarkably like a suction cup being pulled off of a glass window, it stopped, and my eyes shot open to find Miley giving me an amused smile. I noticed that the thin layer of lip balm she had on was smeared an inch outward in every direction.

She gave me a bracing pat on the shoulder before turning back around and cheerfully moving in the direction of the CD player, leaving me to continue gasping for breath and pondering whether any other medium could have provided me with remotely as much luck. Firmly reaching an answer of "never in a million years," I shook my head frenziedly and prepared for the task at hand.

* * *

I crept quickly but silently across the catwalk, stopping only to trade my old Energy Sword for another that had a full charge in an overturned Supply Case. I promptly hung it on my thigh and switched to my Carbine as I kept going. The rather dim glow coming from the ceiling made the edges glint with a soft, yet somehow menacing purple light. I glanced to the corner of my HUD; the power supply on my active camouflage was almost spent.

A quick glance around the corner revealed all I suspected. On the ground floor of the small room, a company of half a dozen Brutes, led by a Captain armed with a Fuel Rod Cannon, prowled the area listlessly, while two Jackals kept sentry on the second story. Covering all available space on the wall were moderately-sized prison cells, which utilized energy shielding to keep their occupants - several abused-looking Elite Councilors and a Hunter pair - safely inside.

Wasting no time, I took aim for the generator on one of the Hunters' cells and snapped off two quick shots. The generator exploded, and, as if it had been waiting for me to free it, the creature let out a war cry and charged directly into the midst of the Brute pack. Without pause, I dropped down a level and repeated the process with its bond brother.

The second Hunter thundered out of the cubicle, then planted its feet against the ground and held out its right arm. The blunt, fingerless end momentarily flared bright green, then discharged a concentrated stream of energy from its Assault Cannon, tearing into the Brute ranks. The first Hunter, with a grand sweep of the shield integrated onto its left arm, knocked two Brutes halfway across the room before they hit the wall and slid to the ground, unmoving. Within seconds, more than half of them lay in dark pools of their own blood on the floor.

I emerged into the open and turned left. Both Jackals immediately ducked behind their shields and began firing at me with their Plasma Pistols. Taking only a fraction of a second to aim, I hurled a plasma grenade at the one in front, which sailed underneath its shield and adhered to its foot.

The avian creature gave a horrified screech and began running around in circles, trying to kick the explosive off, not noticing that in doing so it ended up directly next to the second Jackal. At that precise moment, it detonated in a bright blue flash, obliterating both creatures and throwing their shredded remains high into the air.

I had just turned to take aim at the generators keeping the Councilors imprisoned when the doors at the far end of the room opened, letting in a group of four more Brutes. I managed to take out one of the shields before the combined bombardment from the Brute Shots they carried forced me to duck behind cover.

Waiting a few seconds for my damaged shields to recharge, I unsheathed my Energy Sword and charged into the fray. The first Brute tried to roll out of the way, but it was a moment too late; I lunged forward, driving my weapon down in a lateral sweep that stained the floor with the vile alien's blood before its body even began to fall.

Suddenly, as if emerging from another world, what sounded almost like the cry of some exotic bird pierced the air to my right. More out of reflex than anything, I turned to it. I couldn't see anything through the window in the kitchen.

Another sound, the familiar roar of an attacking Brute accompanied by a pumping noise and a strange _whoosh_, manifested itself in the direction I was facing before. I turned back to the TV just in time to see the shot from the Fuel Rod Cannon that the Captain had been wielding strike me directly in the face, instantly taking down my shields and throwing my lifeless body across the room. The camera switched to third person and lazily rotated around the image for a few seconds, as if purposely taunting me with it, before I respawned.

I sighed. My enthusiasm for the game was dampened by how far back it had sent me, as well as being replaced largely with curiosity about what had made that noise. I put the copy of Halo 2 in its case and turned the Xbox and TV off, then made my way through the kitchen and out to the back porch.

_I must have been playing a long time_, I reflected; judging by the light, it was late afternoon. I squinted, looking around for the source of the noise - it had seemed so close. In this light, however, the shadowed areas, such as the thick bushes separating the Stewarts' yard from those of their neighbors, seemed to have black paint splattered over them, rendering any details effectively impossible to make out.

"Lilly?"

Perhaps it was the instincts one developed naturally by playing Halo 2 that hadn't had enough time to drain out of my system, but for whatever reason, my immediate response was to whirl around sharply while simultaneously snatching up one of the chairs on the porch and coming to a halt with it raised in a threatening position. It was probably only the fact that some part of my subconscious recognized who that voice belonged to that prevented me from hurling the piece of furniture with all my strength at the same time. Instead, I dropped it and moved one hand instead to my pounding heart.

"You scared me, Jackson," I said with a fairly appropriate level of irritation. Not that he was looking so hot either (_Well,_ I thought, _at least not in _some _senses of the word_) - but, of course, it wasn't like I would expect anyone to look calm and collected after almost being attacked by a video game-adrenaline-charged teenager wielding a metal chair. In fact, he probably looked more scared than I had. But I decided to spare him the ordeal of having that pointed out to him.

"Sorry." It was more like he was gasping and mouthing the word at the same time than actually saying it.

I glanced at the chair I had just tossed aside, then turned it back upright and gave Jackson an inviting gesture as I sat down in the chair next to it. He looked hesitant for a moment, as though afraid that the chair might hurt him somehow if he sat down in it, but walked over and took a seat all the same.

"So..." I began awkwardly, "...did you hear something a minute ago?"

"That weird bird thing?"

I straightened up a little. "If that's what it was, yeah."

"Yeah," he said. "That's why I came back here, to see what it was."

I nodded, deciding to keep the knowledge to myself that that was exactly why I'd come back here too. It was almost like it was destiny or something.

At that thought, I gave an inward chuckle. _Okay,_ I thought, _now _that _sounded lame. _Still, for no other reason than to keep me entertained, I toyed with the idea in my head for awhile before pushing it aside and concentrating instead on what was before me.

The air felt warm. Not the fierce, stabbing heat typical of a California midday, when swimming or surfing would be deemed the most suitable of activities, but a pleasant, comfortable warmth that combined with a perfect level of humidity from the nearby ocean to give the unique sensation that it was wrapping around me like a blanket at the end of a long, exhausting day. This feeling was only increased by the light. It was just the same as it had been the last time I'd paid any attention to it, but that time I had somehow avoided noticing how amazing it looked. The Stewarts' backyard wasn't exactly scenic, but the way the orange light from the sun fell so softly upon the wood of the porch and the leaves of the bushes gave me the impression that I'd been smoothly transported from a simple backyard to some distant, unimaginable place where all the troubles I knew before were washed cleanly away, never to return.

"It's beautiful." I was only half-aware that the words had come out of my mouth.

"Yeah." Jackson's words startled me somewhat, halfway shaking me out of my trance and causing me to turn to him in vague, but not unpleasant surprise. "Beautiful." I saw that he was staring right at me when he said it, before he hastily turned away. I did the same in order to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks (which was definitely _not _a result of the sun), and it was then that I realized that it wasn't simply the scenery that was causing all these feelings.

It was odd, considering that we were both sitting in complete silence, but the sound started off so quietly, and increased in volume at such a gradual rate, that for quite some time, I never even realized it was there. Maybe it was something like the theory that if you out a frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll jump out, but if you put it into a pot of room temperature water, then turn the temperature up one degree every two minutes, the frog won't realize any difference even as it's being cooked alive. In any case, it must have been a full three minutes before my brow suddenly furrowed, as if by its own willpower, and I cocked my head to one side and said, "Wait. Do you hear something?" It took Jackson another few seconds of straining his ears, but he noticed it too.

It was... music.

The tone and rhythm were soft and slow, and I honestly could just barely make out the tune even as I paid attention to it; there were no lyrics to interrupt it (or perhaps there were, and they simply meshed together with the music that much better), and the instruments used were mainly things like harps and clarinets that all seemed to flow into each other continuously to create one soothing - and unmistakably _romantic_ - sound.

The two of us sat there quietly for a moment before Jackson turned back to me and suggested halfheartedly, "Maybe it's coming from one of the neighbors' houses."

"Maybe," I said for his benefit and mine, but on the inside, the way it sounded quiet, but somehow far from distant, as well as how it seemed to surround us from all sides, made me think differently.

And yet... Puzzling to me though it was, I found that it didn't trouble me at all. No curious urges poking at my subconscious, telling me to go out and investigate, like they had done with that bird-noise. It was as if the warmth, the scenery, the presence of Jackson right beside me, and now the music were all working together to lull my brain into a state of quiet but powerful felicity. The thought was enough for my body to, almost unintentionally, lean in my chair a bit to the left, in Jackson's direction, as if I could absorb more of this content just by being closer to him.

I don't know why I turned my head. I don't know what I was planning to say to him, or even _if _I was planning to say anything before I did it. And I don't know his reasons for doing the same thing at the same time. But what I do know is that, for whatever reasons either or both of us had, the next instant found us with our lips crashed into each other.

Some people talk about there being a powerful burst of electricity during a kiss, especially a first kiss. Now, it might simply be the fact that this particular kiss caught me completely off-guard while (I assume) most other people at least usually get some kind of warning, but everyone that says that is completely wrong - "electricity" doesn't remotely do the sensation justice. Building off that, trying to describe what it felt like with any measure of accuracy would be like trying to describe a waterfall to a blind man; the only thing that can capture it is that _I was kissing Jackson._

I have no idea how long it lasted, how long we sat there in that position, both of our eyes widened in pure shock from what we were doing, before we drew away; it might have been just one second or ten seconds or ten minutes or all of it rolled into one by some freak interdimensional anomaly. When we did pull back, all I could do was sit there and fell my face blaze like the Malibu sun and breathe like I was in danger of hyperventilating and feel my heart hammer against my ribcage and watch him do all the same-

And then lunge forward at the same time he did and meet him in another kiss even more passionate than the first.

It was bliss as I had never known it, an endless feast after a week of starvation in a merciless desert, a gulp of air after ten minutes underwater - all at the same time. Now our eyes were closed and our mouths open, and we stretched our arms over across the chairs to hold onto each other, in any way possible, as long as it managed to succeed in getting our bodies a mere inch closer to each other, and we were the only thing left in the world, us, Jackson and me, and there was nothing else and there had never _been_ anything else...

Until a familiar pair of identical "Aww..."s coming from the bushes of the Stewarts' backyard jerked me out of this euphoric dream world and slammed me back down to Earth, causing both of us to yelp and jump back from each other to stare at the source - Miley and Oliver, who stood wearing black jumpsuits and the unmistakable grins of someone who knew something they weren't meant to.

Jackson, I could tell immediately, looked as panicked as I felt; he was staring at them with eyes the size and shape of cookies and mouthing words frenziedly, while the whole time nothing came out of his mouth save for a faint, pathetic squeak. I tried to buy him some time to regain control of himself.

"Mi-Miley. Oliver," I said, trying my utmost (and, so it seemed to me, failing entirely) to sound casual and innocent. "I guess you're wondering what we were doing."

"And there's a perfectly logical explanation," piped up Jackson. The only response from Miley and Oliver was a pair of cocked eyebrows and widened grins. "You see..." His eyes darted around the yard, trying to find some source of inspiration. "...Lilly... was eating some spaghetti... and... she got some noodles stuck in her throat!" The fact that he seemed excited with the last part of the sentence did not help. "So..." he continued, despite Miley and Oliver now smiling so hard I was sure their jawbones would crack under the strain before too long, "I was trying to suck them out for her!"

A few seconds of silence passed.

"...I got 'em," Jackson finished weakly. I might have rolled my eyes, had the situation been a little less dire.

Then, to my complete bewilderment, Miley and Oliver both burst into surprisingly hearty laughter. I risked exchanging a confused glance with Jackson - he clearly didn't know what to make of this either.

"It's okay, guys," said Miley when they were finished. She turned to me. "Lilly, consider our debt repaid."

I blinked slowly, as if that would help fuel my comprehension (or lack thereof). "Our... debt?" I asked slowly.

"You remember that little thing you did for us on Valentine's Day?" said Oliver.

"That whole thing where you got us together finally?" added Miley.

It took a few seconds for what they were trying to say to click in my mind.

"You two set this whole thing up?!" It was impossible, there was no _way_ it could be true - yet the widening of the grins plastered on their faces was the only answer I needed.

I was so dumbfounded that for a moment it was tempting to collapse backwards into my chair. But then a million questions raced through my mind, and that was all I needed to keep myself up and alert.

Jackson was one step ahead of me. "How long have you known I... you know..." He gave an odd sort of squirm in my direction. I think they got the point, though.

"Only since yesterday," replied Miley. She looked quite pleased with herself. "I figured it out. I guess once Oliver and I weren't so distracted by... you know... us, then it was obvious about you two."

_Obvious? _my mind screamed at me. Had I really been so careless that she was able to figure it out after just _one day?_

"And then...?"

Miley shrugged. "Then we decided to get you together." She said it as if it was the most obvious conclusion in the world.

Something else clicked in my mind. "The beach..."

A faint blush illuminated Miley's cheeks. Oliver continued for her: "We put some of Mr. Stewart's sleeping pills into your shake, Lilly. Then I ran and told Jackson you needed CPR. We... kinda figured he'd go straight to mouth-to-mouth."

Jackson and I looked at each other, both of us gaping slightly. Something similar apparently happened inside his mind to what had just happened with me, because he turned back and murmured, "The closet..."

This time Oliver's cheeks turned slightly red too. "We thought, maybe if we locked you two in there together, then..." I understood, as I could tell Jackson did.

"And then... what did you do just now?"

Miley turned to me. "Remember how you told Oliver on Valentine's Day, you were gonna give destiny a little push? Not make any big, elaborate plan, but just give us a little nudge in the right direction?" I nodded slowly, and her grin returned. "Same thing. We just set up some speakers in the bushes and hooked them up to a CD player, lured you guys outside on a pretty afternoon with Oliver's fake bird call-" Oliver seemed to think it fit to interrupt at this point with a demonstration, "then we started up the music, and..." She gave a graceful flourish of her hand as if to say, _Voila!_

After a considerably long amount of time, during which Jackson and I stood there, trying to get a grasp on all this, I finally found it in myself to speak. "Let me guess." I noticed my voice sounded a lot more confident than it had earlier. "This one was Miley's idea."

Oliver, however, beamed at me. "Nope. The first two were Miley's. I came up with this one myself."

That was quite possibly an even bigger shock than the concept of the plan itself. I looked at Miley, as if seeking a rebuttal, but she just shrugged and said, "What can I say? The donut gets a good idea every once in a while." She gave him an exaggerated pat on the head.

I saw Jackson look at me out of the corner of my eye, and I copied him numbly. It seemed for a moment that he wasn't going to say anything, but then came the question: "And you... you like... _me?" _It was like it had been voiced by a child - hesitant and supremely unconfident, even verging on disbelieving.

And that made it all the more endearing - I could feel the excited smile spread across my face as I nodded forcefully, hyperactively, and I saw an excited smile of his own blossom forth before our bottled up emotions became too much to bear again, and I threw my arms around his neck in another kiss as he wrapped his around my waist, holding me close to him.

We broke apart just in time for me to catch a glimpse of Miley's face - her smile now seemed to have become rather forced. "Excuse me for a second," she said in a manner that made me recall an image of a flood of water about to burst from a dam. She turned around and calmly made her way around the corner of the house. I heard a retching sound that made my insides twist with a combination of disgust and sympathy, then a wet _slap_ of something hitting the driveway. Within a few seconds, Miley returned, wearing an expression that didn't suggest that anything unusual in the slightest had just happened - however, she looked somewhat paler than before.

Jackson apparently decided to ignore this as well. Instead, his voice adopted a lofty, almost cocky tone: "So, then... why did you do it?"

Miley seemed puzzled by the question. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Why go through the trouble?" A smile, eerily similar to the ones Miley and Oliver had been wearing when they'd seen us kissing, was gradually beginning to appear on his face.

"Because Lilly got us together, of course. We owed her." She sounded slightly hasty.

"Oh really, now? And you're saying that this whole thing was just to repay a debt?" There was a curious gleam in his eye as he strode casually forward.

"Of course," she said quickly. There was a trace of panic on her face. "What other reason would we have?"

"Oh, I don't know," Jackson said in mock-innocence. "Because I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, you might have wanted to help your brother too."

Miley looked temporarily speechless at this claim. Then her face hardened into an expression of defiance. "Uh-uh. No way, no how. Not the case."

"You know," said Jackson, glancing down at his nails with an expression of mild interest, "I don't think I believe you. I think you were trying to help me all along too."

"That's... th-that's completely ridiculous! Take it back!" Miley's voice had grown desperate, and one of her eyes was twitching madly.

"Face it. You've just gotta face it." The all-knowing grin on Jackson's face had reached its fullest. "You love me."

Miley looked at him as though he had accused her of murder. For a moment, her entire body quivered, as though it had been destabilized at a cellular level by Jackson's statement - then she charged forth, her face lit with fury. Luckily, Oliver had seemingly anticipated something of this sort, because he was quick enough to grab her by one arm and hold her back, even as she demanded at the top of her well-honed lungs for Jackson to take it back while she attempted to barrage forward, claw at Jackson with her free hand, and wrestle her other one out of Oliver's grasp all at once.

At last, the rage seemed to drain from her, and Oliver seemed to decide he could trust her not to tear her brother to shreds if he let go. Instead, she merely glared at him with a cold bitterness.

Jackson as looking back at her with a mildly amused expression. "Well?" he said. "Are you going to admit it or not?"

For a second she looked like she was about to attack him again. Then she seemed to give up; her shoulders slumped, and her head fell wearily forward in an expression of defeat.

"Fine," she admitted grudgingly, her face hidden behind the natural barrier formed by her hair. "Some tiny place, deep down-" her head suddenly jerked upward, giving Jackson a full view of her blazing expression, "_really _deep down... always wanted to help you too."

Jackson's face shone with a triumph so thick I could almost see it coming off him as he put his arm confidently around my shoulder. Miley gave a deep sigh, and she seemed to exhale the excess grumpiness as she breathed out, for she straightened back up and at last flashed a smile our way.

She turned to Oliver and spread her arms slightly in a hesitant gesture of invitation - a celebration make out. At first he looked eager, as he practically jumped at the opportunity, but his face turned to revulsion when he was about two feet away from her face; apparently he'd just caught a whiff of vomit on her breath.

"Er... how about we save that for later?" he suggested. Miley rolled her eyes.

"Fine. But you owe me."

I chuckled and looked back up at Jackson, who was grinning back down at me as well, and once again found myself absorbed in one of the first of many, many more kisses to come.

* * *

I made my way down the stairs carefully, being sure not to make a sound that might alert someone to my presence. As father of the household, naturally, I didn't have much practice at this; usually I could walk as freely as I wished, and it was Miley or Jackson who would have to sneak around when in the midst of breaking one of the rules to avoid _me. _However, I'd just heard Miley making a racket in the backyard (something about, "_Take that back!"_), and... well, sometimes it was fun to sneak up on one of them and catch them in the act.

The noise had stopped now, and as I peered around the corner and out the window, I spotted Miley standing alongside Oliver, both of which were facing Jackson and Lilly. I gave an inward sigh: _Of _course _Jackson's involved somehow if she's making a fuss. _Sometimes I wondered how the house had avoided spontaneously combusting simply from the animosity those two showed each other on a daily basis.

But then I frowned - something looked... odd. What was Jackson doing with his arm around Lilly like that? And how come he was smiling so much?

Then, right in front of my eyes, he looked down and drew her into a slow, deep kiss.

I felt my mouth swing open like a barn door, and I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles before looking back up again to make sure of what I had seen. And there they were still - bright as daylight.

I retreated back behind the corner, mind racing. I thought back to only a week ago, when I'd first found out about Miley and Oliver. Of course, I'd seen it coming from a mile away; much as I didn't want my little girl going out with some boy, no matter how good-mannered or whatever else you could say about him, I was glad all the same that at least it had been him.

Just like I'd seen the signs with them, I'd noticed the way Jackson always seemed just a little bit more in the mood to show off when Lilly was around. And how Lilly always seemed to laugh a little harder when Jackson was around. I remembered what it was like, being a teenage boy with a crush, and if I could see the whole Miley and Oliver thing coming, then certainly I'd be able to do the same for my son.

But I'd thought it would've taken longer than _this! _Only a week after Miley and Oliver happened, this did too? _I think I'm losing my touch here, _I mused.

I chanced another peak from behind the corner. Well... they _did _look happy - every bit as happy, in fact, as Miley had looked when I first saw her face when she got home from school on Valentine's Day. Whether or not I was losing my touch, there was something, to be sure.

I grinned to myself as I turned back away.

"Four down," I recited to myself, "none to go."

And with that, I retreated back upstairs.

* * *

Yes, ladies and... er, well, okay then. Yes ladies, that is the end!

Alright, I know that wasn't worth a four-month wait (and don't any of you try to convince me otherwise, 'neither, as I'm sure some of you will try to do); no chapter's worth four months of waiting. Still, especially considering that, at nearly seven thousand words, this chapter's easily the longest one in this story, I personally think that I came about as close to it as possible. However, that's not my decision to make. Keep in mind as well, I wrote a lot of this at a time when, even during summer vacation, I should have been in bed, so perhaps a lot of stuff I thought was good may just be a product of a severe lack of sleep. If anyone just flat-out didn't like this chapter, please don't hesitate to tell me.

I might as well establish it clearly, as someone out there is bound to ask: No, I do not intend on writing a third story. Miley and Oliver have gotten together, now Jackson and Lilly have gotten together... what else is there to write, aside from some sort of dramatic story where - cue intense music! - _the integrity of their relationships are tested?! _I happen to know for a fact that I'd completely ruin that if I tried to write it, so I'm not gonna.

A few things about this chapter before I leave you guys free to review. I remember back in Sweet Hearts, my whole thing about Lilly just tweaking destiny a little bit to get Miley and Oliver together. I'm going to be perfectly honest: I just made that up as an excuse for my lack of imagination for ways Lilly could get them together, because I was too lazy to think up any ingenious scheme for her to use. I had much better ideas when starting this story. But then it just kinda wouldn't seem right if I just tossed that out the window in its sequel, so I decided to maintain it for the third attempt.

I tried to not make the kiss between Lilly and Jackson simply a clone of the one from Sweet Hearts (though I did look back to it a little for reference), which I think I succeeded in doing. If you notice, I tried making this one feel a little more... chaotic, I guess you could say. Lots of run-on sentences and stuff like that, which I think fits Lilly's character more than Oliver's, especially since the kiss between her and Jackson happened on accident. The same basic concept goes for them just staring at each other for a second after their kiss, then going back again for more.

As any of you who have read the story know, Sweet Hearts is told from Oliver's point of view, which includes the final kiss and yada yada. Since I, again, was trying to make this chapter different from Sweet Hearts's final one, I decided to tell it through Lilly. It was a bit of a challenge, since at least Oliver's, you know, a guy, who I can relate to better when it comes to that sort of thing, but I think it paid off. Also, I didn't throw in a part from Jackson's perspective in there, because that would just clog up the ending. I've seen a few stories that use multiple perspectives, like this one, where the author thought they just _had _to get one last word from all the characters. I made a point of avoiding that here; I'm sure, if you're craving it, that you can imagine for yourself pretty easily how Jackson felt.

I hope you enjoyed that little bit from Mr. Stewart at the end there - I've been planning on writing that for a loooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg time. Like, seriously, from pretty much the very start of this story. In fact, if you go back to Chapter 2 and read Oliver's flashback scene, Mr. Stewart says, "Two down, two to go." I'm a little surprised no one seemed to pick up on that, actually (or maybe everyone _did _pick up on that and just never said anything because it didn't seem important then). The "two down" are obviously Miley and Oliver, so that means the "two to go" must be... hmm...

So... I guess that, after over a year since I wrote the first chapter of Sweet Hearts, it's finally over now. I'd like to thank everyone who's ever reviewed this story, in order: **Sidhe-Anomaly, QueenOfBlah, xxReeReexx, Marrisa, Ksllie Lynne. daisy17/daisy617, Perfectionista, . , Falling Further, Taylor Rae, icechains55, Boeremeisie, Color Esperanza, iheartdisney128, Chaotic-obsession4eva, MangoFlavored x3, PlzBeMineAt705, bangsmccoy, risingstar9328, mmvok, Zashleyisthebest, LightningStruckBlackDog, OMG..., swimchick128, I wanna make you holler, IZIBELLE, Forever-charmed14, CheeseJerky, LizardBreathChick, ShortNotice, MileyCyrusNo1fan, MRide, iluvdisneychannel, uhhh i forgot, Sweetfire, Cyrus Fan No. 1, Hannah Montana101, sEriOuS pOnAgE, Tikaani, musiclvr320, MarauderNicki, America's Rockstar, Hiroshikata, rockn'rollchick618, Narya100, XTARUTOX, ElleIra42, MileyAddicted, Apreslaube812, pooksta, , **and **freedomhoney2007**. You guys all rule way more than I do.

Since this is the last chance you guys will have, please leave a review! And even if you don't, thanks so much for taking the time to read this.


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